NOT SUBLIMATED BUT LIBERATED
I don't think we have gotten very far with this idea of sublimation. I don't think sexual energy is sublimated—there is but One energy...whether it is used for firing neurons, making cells, running, sleeping, making the bed or enlightenment. Sex energy is not a separate energy it is simply one of the activities that one can do with the lifeforce. We think of it as separate due to the particular sensations and the powerful unconscious drive behind it associated with the reward chemicals. Nature rewards us for at least making an effort toward procreation.
Barbara Marx Hubbard's idea of cocreativity as being "suprasex" is a step forward in that it acknowledges the pleasure involved in cooperative creativity. But sex is not sublimated in suprasex...cocreativity is simply another activity in which lifeforce can be applied pleasurably. Nature wires us for success in that which furthers life and so evolution is hardwired into the form and function of life and the living process. However human beings, especially at present in our fragmented state, are complex multilayered creatures.
The current evolutionary work is defragging...of rising beyond the neurosis caused by eons of trauma...and learning to communicate and commune on a much higher, deeper level. This can only occur through the inner marriage, inner intimacy and Knowing Thyself. The success that Nature is now directing us towards through the pleasure drive is not the simple successes of the past such as mating, baby making, shelter building and food procurement. Through breaking out of the shell of retreat from life and slofting off the inertia of the past...we increasingly hone into cosmogenesis on a more universal level. The pleasure drive itself evolves.
Thus it is not sublimation of socalled "lower" levels of energy into the socalled "higher" that we are talking about. The pleasure drive itself changes focus. It is one energy that is evolving different modes of expression through time. The energy itself always seeks higher, deeper more meaningful outlets in order to establish greater neurochemically spiritual rewards. It is the "content" of soul-meaning, the flavor of Being and the flowering of the heart that we are driven by...it is not simply the endorphins, anandamide, DMT that we are compelled like drug addicts to seek in the crevices of our gray matter. But all feeling, thought, sensation and qualia has its "chemical" component.
I am sure somewhere in the Jungian literature this idea of one energy of lifeforce and transmutation is expressed beautifully. Freud’s notion of…”Sublimation [was] discredited because religious and cultural activities are authentic parts of psychological existence AND manifestations of an autonomous instinct to create, not derivatives of sexual impulses. Jung posited instead a transformation of psychic energy. Jung compared "sublimation" to the alchemical trick of turning lead into gold--"Unfortunately, the secret of converting energy without the consumption of a still greater quantity of energy has never yet been discovered by the physicists" ("Sigmund Freud In His Historical Setting").” Craig Chalquist, MS PhD
www.terrapsych.com/jungdefs.htmlWilhelm Reich was the great comprehensive genius on the One Energy of life that constitutes this entire universe. Of course humanity was still too genitally focused through eons of sexual abuse and repression to hear what he was saying, and so only understood him through pornographic eyes.
Transmutation is the chemoelectric component of the evolutionary process and drive...the urge to incarnate in ever greater expression of Spirit. There are far greater energies and rewards related to kundalini's transmuting fires than to the burning human passion for the opposite sex. This is so because "success" in sex and procreation is secondary or reliant on the successful transmutation of the individuals. Speedy transmuters have eliminated the drag of dysfunction and life-negating agents be they thought, matter or emotion, and are freed up to transfigure at a greater evolutionary speed...because the potential for light speed incarnation is always already there, waiting for us to loose our gravity and antispin habits.
Of course such alchemy must remain secret, except in a community of peers that speak the same language...for the ignorance of the inertial culture on these matters is almost total. They remain transfixed in the default reality created in a way by the suppression of this evolutionary force. In our generation, with the aid of the internet to spread the good news, we have an opportunity for lift-off of the human species which has never occurred before except in small contained secret societies.
So I don't think sexual energy is sublimated in the service of higher pursuits...it is just that the One Energy is liberated to explore and express other forms.