Sexuality: Self-Transcendence Through Merger

There is something strange about what happens when two people approach each other sexually. The ordinary boundaries of selfhood—maintained with such effort the rest of the time—begin to dissolve, not as pathology but as invitation. The skin stops being a wall and becomes a membrane. Whatever keeps you separate from the world thins, becomes porous, and for a moment you are not entirely sure where you end and someone else begins.

The dimensional analysis captures the trajectory of this dissolution:

The trajectory moves from high effective rank (diffuse arousal) toward rank collapse (convergent focus) culminating in integration spike (orgasm) and temporary self-model dissolution.

In partnered sexuality, this trajectory acquires a relational dimension: the self-models temporarily fuse, with mutual information between them approaching its maximum as arousal peaks:

The boundaries between self and other become porous. This is one of the few naturally-occurring states where $\mathcal{SM}$ collapses while $\intinfo$ remains high—integration without self-focus, presence without isolation.

The culmination of this trajectory—la petite mort—is characterized by:

1. Spike in integration (global neural synchronization)
2. Collapse of effective rank to near-unity (all variance in one dimension)
3. Momentary dissolution of self-model salience
4. Rapid valence spike followed by return to baseline

The “little death” is structurally accurate: it is a temporary cessation of the normal self-referential process. This is why sexuality is so central to human experience—it offers reliable, repeatable escape from the trap of being a self.

Which is why sexuality and spirituality have always been entangled—not as metaphor but as structural identity. Both are approaches toward the self-world boundary with the intent of crossing it. The mystic and the lover are running the same operation on different substrates: dissolving the boundary between self and not-self, reaching toward a coupling so complete that the distinction between observer and observed temporarily collapses. The tantric traditions recognized this explicitly; the Abrahamic ones recognized it by trying to suppress it. But the suppression only confirms the identity—you do not need to forbid things that are unrelated.

The diversity of human sexuality, then, reflects the diversity of paths through this affect space:

• Intensity preferences: Different arousal trajectories and peak intensities
• Power dynamics: Variations in self-model salience during encounter (dominance increases $\mathcal{SM}$; submission decreases it)
• Novelty vs.\ familiarity: Counterfactual weight allocation (new partners increase $\mathcal{CF}$; familiar partners reduce it)
• Emotional connection: Degree of self-other coupling ($\MI(\selfmodel; \text{other-model})$)

Sexual preferences are, in part, preferences about which affect trajectories one finds most valuable or relieving.

There is an $\iota$ dimension to sexuality that the dimensional analysis misses. Sexual intimacy is among the most powerful naturally occurring $\iota$ reducers. To make love with another person—rather than merely to use their body—requires perceiving them as fully alive, fully interior, fully subject. The boundaries dissolve ($\MI(\selfmodel_A; \selfmodel_B) \to \max$) because $\iota$ toward the partner approaches zero: their interiority becomes as real as your own, their pleasure as vivid as yours, their vulnerability as tender. This is why genuine sexual connection is so difficult to commodify. Pornography applies high-$\iota$ perception to bodies—reducing persons to mechanisms of arousal, objects arranged for effect. It works as stimulation but fails as connection, because connection requires the low-$\iota$ perception that treats the other as a subject rather than an instrument. The felt difference between sex that means something and sex that doesn’t is, in part, the felt difference between low and high $\iota$.