Sex is a beginning, love is the end. One can easily get hung up anywhere in between.
With tantra... the movement of energy is like on a vertical plane, from sex to super-consciousness. At the base it is on the level of animals. Moving higher in awareness, it approaches the divine state.
One can get hung up with sex and live just like any animal. Eating, sleeping, procreating and repeating it. Moving from cradle to grave on this level is easy, any animal can do it.
Moving higher in consciousness is something a human being has over other animals. Man has a choice in this regard.
With sex, in the beginning, the other is needed. Finding a mate, one seeks the polar opposite. Man seeks outwardly for a woman. Woman seeks outwardly for a man. Its electric/magnetic, as magnetic poles attract each other. In the beginning the other can help with orgasm, with the experience of ecstasy, the dropping of ego, the dropping of thoughts. Experience of the 'Self'.
Hence, the phrase... falling in love... it is a falling from the head to the heart, from thinking to being. It is what love is.
In the beginning the other is needed to experience this state of loving-ness. But it is not dependent on the other to attain this. In the beginning the other can help, but in the end, the other is not really needed. The man comes to find his inner woman, the woman comes to find her inner man. One becomes complete unto him or herself. The energy stops being dissipated and circulates within. Hence the meaning of the yin yang symbol. But one has to begin at the beginning with sex. Trying to move to a higher level of awareness without going through sex, and one will only create a situation that will lead to failure and more difficulties to overcome. The first step is into sex, not by avoiding it.
