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Quotes on Brahmacharya - Part 2
"There is a great difference between lust and love. Lust binds and love
liberates. The aim of married life is to attain Moksha or Freedom, but
never the satisfaction of lust. The married couple must lead the sexual
life only till they beget one or two children just to keep up the line of
heritage and after which, the wife must look upon her husband as her own
father or brother and the husband must look upon his wife as his own mother
or sister and thus both must eradicate lust completely. For every sexual
intercourse one has to take a new birth in this world."
"Where there is Rama (God) there is no Kama (lust), and where there is
Kama there is no Rama"
"If one can observe strict and perfect Brahmacharya without a break for
twelve years, then a particular Nadi (nerve) called Medha Nadi develops in a
person. With the development of this Nadi, one gets the sixth sense
(Super-consciousness), by which one can know of the past, present and the
future events."
- Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
"True dispassion does not arise in one by austerity, charity,
pilgrimage etc., but only by directly perceiving one's own nature.
...by right self-exertion firmly reject the seeking of pleasure. when
dispassion matures, the spirit of inquiry arises in oneself. The
spirit of inquiry strengthens dispassion. The two are interdependent,
even as the ocean and the clouds are. These two and also
self-realization are all intimate friends and always exist togather."
"When the self is seen, the mind comes under complete control. When
the mind is in complete control, only then the self is seen completely!"
"Therefore one's intelligent practise has to be simultaenously
twofold; to behold the self and to subdue the mind. By intense
self-effort and steady practice you can gain both these, and then you
will enter that region and never again experience sorrow"
- Yoga Vasistha
"The human energy which is expressed as sex energy, in sexual thought, when
checked and controlled, easily becomes changed into Ojas, and as the
Muladhara guides these, the Yogi pays attention to that centre. He tries to
take up all this sexual energy and convert it into Ojas. It is only the
chaste man or woman who can make the Ojas rise and store it in the brain;
that is why chastity has always been considered the highest virtue. A man
feels that if he is unchaste, spirituality goes away, he loses mental vigour
and moral stamina. That is why in all the religious orders in the world
which have produced spiritual giants you will always find absolute chastity
insisted upon. That is why the monks came into existence, giving up
marriage. There must be perfect chastity, in thought, word and deed.
Without it the practice of Raja-Yoga is dangerous and may lead to insanity."
- Swami Vivekananda
"One that observes Brahmacharya not only must avoid the company of the other
sex but also of those who are given to sexuality."
- From Srimad Bhagavata
"A wise man should avoid unchastity as if it were a burning pit of live coals. From the contact comes sensation, from sensation thirst, from thirst clinging; by ceasing from that, the soul is delivered from all sinful existence."
- Gautama Buddha
"God dwells in you, as you, and you don't have to 'do' anything to
be God-realized or Self-realized, it is already your true and
natural state." Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward,
and sacrifice your mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of
your very being. For this to be your own presently lived experience,
Self-Inquiry is the one direct and immediate way."
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
"Misery of dependency on sex is greater than the transient happiness
derived from it. When one realizes this, he will be free from the
false infatuation and vice grip of sex. "
"Millions of lives die in only one act of sex through the loss of
millions of living sperms. This is tremendous violence. Not realizing
this, people believe sexual act to be the highest pleasure. They do
not understand that a life is precious and must not be lost except as
a last resort. But what happens when there is no understanding? "
"When will a woman respect you and be deferential to you? If you were
very sensitive about sex, easily aroused by sexuality, then she would
control you. If you are sexual but not sensitive, not easily aroused,
then she will develop respect for you"
-Dadashri
liberates. The aim of married life is to attain Moksha or Freedom, but
never the satisfaction of lust. The married couple must lead the sexual
life only till they beget one or two children just to keep up the line of
heritage and after which, the wife must look upon her husband as her own
father or brother and the husband must look upon his wife as his own mother
or sister and thus both must eradicate lust completely. For every sexual
intercourse one has to take a new birth in this world."
"Where there is Rama (God) there is no Kama (lust), and where there is
Kama there is no Rama"
"If one can observe strict and perfect Brahmacharya without a break for
twelve years, then a particular Nadi (nerve) called Medha Nadi develops in a
person. With the development of this Nadi, one gets the sixth sense
(Super-consciousness), by which one can know of the past, present and the
future events."
- Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
"True dispassion does not arise in one by austerity, charity,
pilgrimage etc., but only by directly perceiving one's own nature.
...by right self-exertion firmly reject the seeking of pleasure. when
dispassion matures, the spirit of inquiry arises in oneself. The
spirit of inquiry strengthens dispassion. The two are interdependent,
even as the ocean and the clouds are. These two and also
self-realization are all intimate friends and always exist togather."
"When the self is seen, the mind comes under complete control. When
the mind is in complete control, only then the self is seen completely!"
"Therefore one's intelligent practise has to be simultaenously
twofold; to behold the self and to subdue the mind. By intense
self-effort and steady practice you can gain both these, and then you
will enter that region and never again experience sorrow"
- Yoga Vasistha
"The human energy which is expressed as sex energy, in sexual thought, when
checked and controlled, easily becomes changed into Ojas, and as the
Muladhara guides these, the Yogi pays attention to that centre. He tries to
take up all this sexual energy and convert it into Ojas. It is only the
chaste man or woman who can make the Ojas rise and store it in the brain;
that is why chastity has always been considered the highest virtue. A man
feels that if he is unchaste, spirituality goes away, he loses mental vigour
and moral stamina. That is why in all the religious orders in the world
which have produced spiritual giants you will always find absolute chastity
insisted upon. That is why the monks came into existence, giving up
marriage. There must be perfect chastity, in thought, word and deed.
Without it the practice of Raja-Yoga is dangerous and may lead to insanity."
- Swami Vivekananda
"One that observes Brahmacharya not only must avoid the company of the other
sex but also of those who are given to sexuality."
- From Srimad Bhagavata
"A wise man should avoid unchastity as if it were a burning pit of live coals. From the contact comes sensation, from sensation thirst, from thirst clinging; by ceasing from that, the soul is delivered from all sinful existence."
- Gautama Buddha
"God dwells in you, as you, and you don't have to 'do' anything to
be God-realized or Self-realized, it is already your true and
natural state." Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward,
and sacrifice your mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of
your very being. For this to be your own presently lived experience,
Self-Inquiry is the one direct and immediate way."
- Sri Ramana Maharshi
"Misery of dependency on sex is greater than the transient happiness
derived from it. When one realizes this, he will be free from the
false infatuation and vice grip of sex. "
"Millions of lives die in only one act of sex through the loss of
millions of living sperms. This is tremendous violence. Not realizing
this, people believe sexual act to be the highest pleasure. They do
not understand that a life is precious and must not be lost except as
a last resort. But what happens when there is no understanding? "
"When will a woman respect you and be deferential to you? If you were
very sensitive about sex, easily aroused by sexuality, then she would
control you. If you are sexual but not sensitive, not easily aroused,
then she will develop respect for you"
-Dadashri
The transmutation of sexual energy
74 Replies
In this excerpt from Kishor Gandhi’s book Light on life-problems, Sri Aurobindo eludicates on the spiritual purpose behind the transmutation of sexual energies and whether psychological disorders can be caused by abstinence. Please note that this exchange occurred in the early twentieth century and therefore contains references to some personalities who were prominent at that time.
Question: Balzac, the famous French novelist, was of the opinion that indulgence in sex greatly hampers the high type of mental activity. According to him, “The man of genius is frigid. When he tries to lead both lives, the intellectual life and the love life, the man of genius dies, as Raphael died (it seems he died at 37 after a night of excessive sex) and Lord Byron.” So also Havelock Ellis, recognised as the world’s greatest authority on sex, maintains that to increase artistic and mental capacity and force it is necessary to restrain sexual activity. “The brain and the sexual organs,” he says, “are yet the great rivals in using up bodily energy, and there is an antagonism between extreme brain vigour and extreme sexual vigour, even though they may sometimes both appear at different periods in the same individual”. We find this evidenced in the life of some great masters of art like Beethoven and Mozart, in whose life sexual indulgence played a much smaller part than in the life of an average man. This would seem to imply that it is necessary to conserve sexual energy for the energisation and intensification of higher intellectual and aesthetic life. How far is this view justifiable ?
Answer: That is correct. The sex-energy can be controlled and diverted from the sex-purpose and used for aesthetic and artistic or other creation and productiveness or preserved for heightening of the intellectual or other energies. Entirely controlled, it can be turned into a force of spiritual energy also. This was well known in ancient India and was described as the conversion of retas into ojas by Brahmacharya. Retas, the sex-fluid, consists of two elements, one meant for sex-purposes, the other as a basis of general energy, and if the sex-action is not indulged and the sex-fluid is prevented from being spent away, it turns into ojas. The whole theory of Brahmacharya is based upon that by the Yogis.
This is a list of Sanskrit terms to help understand the next question:
- Retas = sexual fluid.
- Tapas = spiritual heat felt in the body during meditation.
- Ojas = spiritual vigor which is felt after union with and immersion into cosmic energies.
- Tejas = spiritual light observed within.
- Vidyut = electrical power which courses through the body during Yoga.
Question: What is the process by which ‘retas‘ (sex fluid) is transformed into ‘ojas‘ (vigor)?
Answer: The fundamental physical unit is the retas, in which the tejas, the heat and light and electricity in a man, is involved and hidden. All energy is thus latent in the retas. This energy may be either expended physically or conserved. All passion, lust, desire wastes the energy by pouring it, either in the gross form or a sublimated subtle form, out of the body. On the other hand, all self-control conserves the energies in the retas, and conservation always brings with it increase. But the needs of the physical body are limited and the excess of energy must create a surplus which has to turn itself to some use other than the physical. According to the ancient theory, retas is jala(fluid), full of light and heat and electricity, in one word, of tejas.
- The excess of the retas turns first into heat or tapas which stimulates the whole system, and it is for this reason that all forms of self-control and austerity are called tapas or tapasya, because they generate the heat or stimulus which is a source of powerful action and success.
- Secondly, it turns to tejas or light, the energy which is at the source of all knowledge.
- Thirdly, it turns to vidyut or electricity, which is at the basis of all forceful action whether intellectual or physical.
In the vidyut again is involved the ojas, or pranashakti, the primal energy which proceeds from ether. The retas, refining from jala to tapas, tejas and vidyut and from vidyut to ojas, fills the system with physical strength, energy and brain-power and in its last form of ojas rises to the brain and informs it with that primal energy which is the most refined form of matter and nearest to spirit. It is ojas that creates a spiritual force or virya, by which a man attains to spiritual knowledge, spiritual love and faith, spiritual strength. It follows that the more we can by Brahmacharya increase the store of tapas(heat), tejas(light), vidyut(electric) and ojas(vigor), the more we shall fill ourselves with utter energy for the works of the body, heart, mind and spirit.
Question: Many eminent psychologists, doctors and thinkers believe that complete sexual abstinence is dangerous and may lead to serious nervous trouble and even mental derangement. They maintain that the new form of energy produced from the sublimation of sexual energy may be harmful and may lead to perversities and morbidities. Rene Guyon, for example, points out: “When the libido is repressed, when its impetus is crushed back, it is forced to find an outlet by some other route …. But this compensation is not necessarily useful, superior and worthy of admiration. It can just as well be harmful and destructive.” How far is this true ?
Answer: It is a fact that sex suppressed in outward action but indulged in other ways may lead to disorders of the system and brain troubles. That is the root of the medical theory which discourages sexual abstinence. But these things happen only when there is either secret indulgence of a perverse kind replacing the normal sexual activity or else an indulgence of it in a kind of subtle vital way by imagination or by an invisible vital interchange of an occult kind; harm never occurs when there is a true effort at mastery and abstinence.
Question: The Freudian system of psycho-analysis has attributed a large number of physical and mental disorders to suppressed sexual desire. To what extent are the assertions of this system true?
Answer: The psycho-analysis of Freud takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and crude. As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mind to take a partial or local truth, generalise it unduly and try to explain a whole field of Nature in its narrow terms runs riot here. Moreover, the exaggeration of the importance of suppressed sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood and it can have a nasty influence and tend to make the mind and vital more and not less fundamentally impure than before.
See also:
- Napoleon Hill in his book How to think and grow rich illustrates how the men of greatest achievement are also those who have mastered sex transmutation. See Chapter 11 : Mystery of Sex Transmutation. Another copy of the chapter is available @ Google books: Mystery of Sex Transmutation
- Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the “Sex urge in Nature”
- Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on “Yoga and the conquest of sex”
- Swami Vivekananda in his Lessons on Raja Yoga expatiates on the transmutation of sexual energy into ojas (spiritual force)
- Kishor Gandhi was a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. His book Light on Life Problems from which the above excerpt has been taken is freely available at Google Books and the Internet Archive
Vivekanada on Bramhacharya, connection of psychic powers and arousal of sexual energy:
The great danger of psychic powers is that man stumbles, as it were, into them, and knows not how to use them rightly. He is without training and without knowledge of what has happened to him. The danger is that in using these psychic powers, the sexual feelings are abnormally roused as these powers are in fact manufactured out of the sexual centre. The best and safest way is to avoid psychic manifestations, for they play the most horrible pranks on their ignorant and untrained owners.
To go back to symbols. Because this movement of the Ojas up the spinal cord feels like a spiral one, it is called the "snake". The snake, therefore, or the serpent, rests on the bone or triangle. When it is roused, it travels up the spinal cord; and as it goes from centre to centre, a new natural world is opened inside us—the Kundalini is roused
.
