Review of A Return to Eros

by Kerstin Zohar Tuschik

Without any marketing or press, one of our key think tank projects at the Center for Integral Wisdom, A Return to Eros: The Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive – co-authored by Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Kristina Kincaid – is already #1 New Release on amazon.com in Sacred Sexuality right now. Many of our American friends have already received their copy.

Here is the review I wrote – since I had the pleasure of reading it already pre-publication – which amazon wouldn’t allow me to post:

Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Kristina Kincaid have written a very important book for our times. The way they talk about Eros, it takes it out of the bedroom and the context of our most intimate relationships into the largest context there is. Eros, as they understand it, is the interior of all the forces of attraction in our universe, the very forces that drive evolution to more and more complexity, more and more consciousness, and the potential for more and more and deeper and deeper love. In human beings, that same Eros manifests as a sense of radical aliveness, creativity, and wonder.

What becomes crystal clear upon reading: It is a failure of Eros that lies at the core of so many of our contemporary collective crises that threaten our very survival as a species. When we repress our sexuality, Eros breaks down, which is followed by a breakdown of ethics. When, on the other hand, we expect the sexual to fulfill all of our erotic needs, sexuality breaks down under the burden it cannot bear.

So, read this book and be amazed of the depth of insight and realization that awaits you by truly engaging its content.

If you feel numbed out and not able to access your full aliveness, read this book.

If you feel shamed about your sexuality and haven’t found a way out of it yet, read this book.

If you are an activist feeling more and more hopeless in your desire to make a real difference in the world, read this book.

If you are a spiritual seeker wondering about the relationship between sexuality and spirituality, this book is for you.

Kerstin Zohar Tuschik

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Some Editorial Reviews

“Marc and Kristina are going where few dare to to go and showing us what it means to live a fully erotic life!”

–Dr. John Gray, author of Beyond Venus and Mars

“A Return to Eros is a tour de force of the kind thatcomes along once in a generation. The way this volume brings Eros toconsciousness as the fundamental force direction and ‘purpose’ of reality onall levels and all quadrants, really is the discovery that now underlies,directs, and “explains” the sacred purpose of cosmogenesis, the birthnarrative of the New Human.

It’s the second coming of humanity for the first time in historyincarnate as a fully embodied sacred sexual being.

It’s the early stages of next evolutionary unfolding.

A Return to Eros forms the basis ofevolutionary spirituality. It captures the glory of its conscious experiencefrom the inside out in the sexuality and Eros of the evolutionary unique self.

It’s the experiential basis of the next stage of living and loving. It’s the deepest reason for profound sexual yearning. It’s vital and is truly the only path beyond shame. It must not be denied. It reveals the very nature of ‘God-in-evolution’. It is the answer to my life question: What is the meaning of our new power that is good?

The answer is the manifestation of Evolutionary Creator Love inhuman form to its next level of the supramental genius as consciously guided self and social evolution.

It’s the source energy, which can arouse the Planetary Awakening through Unique Self Symphony.

It is the juicy and delicious fruit of the joining of genius.Sexuality and suprasexuality become one.

God ‘Took the Risk’ in revealing E = MC2, the genetic code–the language of science–to give humans the powers of our ancient gods to use.

What the authors call ‘Love or Die’ is the new commandment of the ontic human.

It is conscious evolution revealed as erotic evolution made awareof us in our loving. It is the fundamental sacralization of sex at all levels.

The authors make the radical claim, which I believe is true, thatwhen this force is not recognized, when it is denied, the result is abuse, weather in the form of rape culture or in the false complaints that attempt therape of a name. It is only, the authors tell us, ‘when we embrace the fullbeauty of our embodied Eros, not merely in the sexual but in every dimension of our lives.’

Marc Gafni, the first author of this book, is an Erotic Radical. He incarnates the evolutionary Eros and articulates its teaching in a way that is several steps ahead of the generation. As such he has, as radicals often do, born the cross of a new vision, seen his actions falsified and distorted, ordinary mistakes pathologized. But as I have witnessed myself in a thousand conversations, he has kept his heart open in love, and turned his suffering into a gift and his pain into art. I am proud to stand with my beloved evolutionary partner Marc in offering vitally needed gifts at this moment in our evolution.

Marc’s co-author on this volume, Kristina Kincaid, herself incarnates evolutionary Eros through her work with the body. Mentored by the leading edge somatic teachers of our time, she understands the inseparable connection between one’s sexuality, one’s emotionality and how that relationship is mirrored through our relationship to life. She brings a deep embodied understanding of the flow of Eros, love, and sexuality through the body and how it can radically transform our lives and birth the new human. A human being that is unarmored in the body, connected through the heart and to all of life.”

–Barbara Marx Hubbard, Author of Conscious Evolution

“A Return to Eros is poetry. And not just poetry in spirituality, where poetry often catalyzes the spirit. Nor in eroticism, to which poetry often opens the door. But poetry in philosophy, poetry in science, and poetry in history–where poetry is often a stranger.

A Return to Eros does not fit into any recognizable genre. It is not pure scholarship even as it is scholarly. It is not self-help even as it inspires transformation. It is not religious in nature even as it offers visions that seek to unify the agnostic and the fundamentalist.

In fact, part of the delight of A Return to Eros is the element of surprise: Will we be treated to history or the future? To spiritual insight or scientific fact? To philosophy’s sustainable gifts or to Gafni and Kincaid’s reworking of those gifts toward the deepening of our future erotic wisdom.

When it comes to the future of love, sex, and eros, what society often sees as black or white, the authors see in shades of grey. They invite us to confront our cognitive dissonance: ‘puritanism lives side-by-side with promiscuity.’ Or: ‘We are not sure whether we are living in the golden age of sex or in a rape culture.’ The authors venture where others fear to tread: how we deal with rape of the body versus rape of a reputation should there be a false accusation.

Yet still greater gifts of A Return to Eros are not in its surprises but in its weaving of diverse insights into a vision that is greater than the sum if it parts. The authors’ integration of the disciplines presents us with a tapestry that reweaves the source code of culture. We dance to the music of the tango that was sex and eros and then listen for the tango that sex and eros can become.

A Return to Eros, then, is paradoxical: It is both the return of eros and the future of eros. It is the return of love, sex, and eros; and the future of love, sex, and eros. It is about the history of religion’s constraints on sex; and about the history of religion’s lack of constraints on sex–especially how the esoterics’ embrace of sex forge the erotic and holy into one. As we discover religion’s esoterics embracing the erotic, we awaken our personal potential to heal our relationship with religion. It soon becomes no surprise when Gafni and Kincaid declare that AReturn to Eros is all about sex and not at all about sex.

Although A Return to Eros is a return to the wisdom of Solomon’s Temple, the Magdalene Mysteries, and Da Vinci, it is not a book about the past. Rather, it is a vision rooted in wisdoms forgotten from our past that inspire a more erotic future–what Gafni and Kincaid call a ‘memory of the future.’

All of this may make us yearn for simpler answers. But we recall Gafni’s warning: When simplicity falls short of reality, it leaves us feeling disappointed and disillusioned. A Return to Eros selects for readers who know that bringing the unconscious to the conscious level rewards us with the capacity to control our own lives–even if part of that control is the choice to ‘let go, and let God.’ And when we bring philosophies like ‘let go, and let God’ to the conscious level, we discover when we are using it to avoid responsibility. Eros, like golf, requires our both taking control of the way we hit the ball even as we let go of control of the way we hit the ball. To Gafni and Kincaid, holding the paradox of eros is a taste of paradise.

A Return to Eros considers ‘Eros to be the center of our reality . . . to live erotically not merely in the sexual but in every facet of being.’ Their examination of the twelve faces of the Erotic, and the many wrinkles among those faces, is like being conscious of every drop in the next shower you take. The mere experience of considering every drop of the shower as if they were ‘all there is’ will leave you feeling as enlivened as you will feel after reading A Return to Eros.”

–Warren Farrell, PhD, Author of The Myth of Male Power

“A Return to Eros is the map for the new human. Read it and be forever enlivened and transformed! I believe this is the most compelling invitation ever written to live the Erotic Life. It changed my life.”

―Kristen Ulmer, former professional extreme skier and author of The Art of Fear

“Surrender to this book. Erudite, provocative, and filled with lively insights, there is much to be learned from it about the sexual confusion of our times.”

―Adam Bellow, author of In Praise of Nepotism: A History of Family Enterprise from King David to George W. Bush

“A Return to Eros is a book written with no hang-ups, no compromises, and no holds barred. It rocks!”

―Jonny Podell, iconic American rock ‘n’ roll music agent at the Podell Talent Agency

“I’ve known Kristina for many decades . . . great to see she is sharing her life work with the world . . . Join the outrageous love train!”

―Shep Gordon, legendary rock ‘n’ roll manager and New York Times bestselling author of They Call Me Supermensch

“A Return to Eros is a powerful and thought-provoking book―which has the potential to transform your life.”

―Sally Kempton, author of Awakening Shakti

“A Return to Eros should be placed on the shelf next to the great works on emotional and sexual emancipation, including Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization and O Brown’s Life Against Death. Gafni and Kincaid remind us that eros and ethics are inseparable, that we must free the erotic from the ghetto of the merely sexual, and in so doing awaken our passion for truth and justice. There may be no more urgent lesson for our culture, which now stands on the brink of another descent into barbarism, that it is through and from love that true power flows.”

―Zak Stein, EdD (Harvard), academic director of the Center for Integral Wisdom, faculty at Meridian University, scientific advisor for Neurohacker Collective, and cofounder of Lectica, Inc.

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