I have always claimed that
intellectual orgasms are better than physical orgasms. I believe this because I have had intellectual orgasms long before I could
have physical ones. And I will continue to have the former long after I stop having the latter. The former last longer and are more permanent. I still get a
thrill from thinking about how I solved the
Rubik's cube when I was eight. That's a thrill that no
physical experience can match. Even today, each time I
use the solution (well, this is a different solution, but still) to complete the cube, I get a big kick out of it.
I'm a very sexual person, and I enjoy sex a lot, and sure, sex for the second/minute/hour/day seems great at that moment but it is temporal and ephemeral.
All the sex I've had, even though some of it was excellent at the time, does not have the longevity of solving an intellectual problem. That is, sex is
generally extremely fleeting whereas the spurts of thought (interesting choice of words there, eh?) you experience I think are more fulfilling.
The idea of thinking in terms of orgasms is a goal-oriented one indeed. However, my comments apply to the process of sex and intellectualisation also. In
other words, before a great intellectual discovery, there is usually a period of passionate labor involved which is akin to foreplay before engaging in an
orgasmic act. Like with orgasms, intellectual foreplay is better than physical foreplay.
Ultimately, I think humans are fundamentally creatures of the mind (even though we are just animals, our survival is dependent on us using our minds not
our bodies). One of my mentors once asked me to compare the expression on a dog's face when it's having sex to the expression on a human's face. His
question then was: "have you ever seen a dog think?"
People often say to me when I say words like the above that perhaps I am not having sex correctly. I say to them that perhaps they are not thinking right.
- from Ram Samudrala of ram.org, used with permission