EWS #22: Human relationships, marriage and sex (6)
Feb 02, 2019
Topics:
Narad (0:00:00):
Thank you. Welcome again to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste. Is this our last talk on the subject?
[Sraddhalu] On this theme, perhaps. <laughs>
[Narad] So perhaps this is the last talk on human relationships, marriage and sex. You wanted to begin with this aspect?
Sraddhalu (0:00:55):
Yes. So I think in the last discussion we had, we discussed gradations of substance being refined as a result of celibacy and contained sexual energy and how it reaches a gradation which has almost an access to spiritual phenomena and experiences.
Sraddhalu (0:01:04):
And the result of that conservation is it energizes the body, energizes the emotions, the vitality, the mind and even the spiritual potential. And we saw how important that is. So today we will explore some of the higher implications of the spiritual power and also how it is possible to regenerate from above, for this energy. But we will start with the question.
Audience (0:02:11):
Yes, I actually heard this as a comment in a film, which is not a great source of information. The thing that was said was that you people in India, you all the time are saying that sex is chi-chi, taboo and all that. But you have the second greatest population in the world, so it's a kind of hypocrisy and I mean basically there's a lot of taboo and people don't talk about it and because the country as a whole is having a spiritual culture, so it's like enforced brahmacharya even if you are not ready for it, something like that. You know, the lack of openness and things.
Sraddhalu (0:02:45):
India is also the creator of the Kama Sutra which is the manual for sexual enjoyment and relations and which goes quite deep not only into physical positions but psychology and other nuances of it. So if you look back at the Indian culture you do not find this confusion or conflict in the earlier phases of the culture where sex and marital life generally which includes sex as a small part of it, the family life itself was given a legitimate place in the four great stages of life. The first stage being Brahmacharya, where all of the energies are contained and directed towards building the individuality and especially our higher potential and subsequently once the individuality was formed, you moved into family life, where you formed a unit with two and then three children and so on, but the sense of family life also was not just about sexual enjoyment for your personal pleasure. It was about fulfilling a larger role and sexual enjoyment was a part of it as one of the forms of enjoyment. There is much more enjoyment of the affectionate relationships, the enjoyment of caring for children and bringing up children, the enjoyment of looking after your larger family and so on. And especially in a unit which was then the joint family where you often had grandparents along with children, it made for a very healthy whole. So at any given point in life, you could put a pause and you would see grandparents, parents, children. As the children grow to become the next parents, these have become grandparents and all three levels are present at the same time. What is interesting about this arrangement is, it's part of nature's design, that everybody has something to give to everybody and to benefit from everybody. It makes for the most complete unit in society, in a vertical sense and the same thing extended horizontally makes society extremely healthy. So what you see here, while the parents look after the children in terms of being responsible for their behavior and giving them good values etc., in a disciplinarian mode which is their instinct, the grandparents are looking after the same grandchildren now in an indulgence and the two become complementary to each other. And grandparents have the satisfaction now when they are reasonably retired from life they cannot do the things which they could to hand over to their children but now to find a sense of purpose in caring for the grandchildren and so it made for a perfect unit until they transitioned, now thinking of being like children ready to take next birth as the children.
Narad (0:05:40):
But Mother wants to break up the family. At least for the sadhana, she wanted the children to be in boarding. She didn't want the parents to come and destroy what the good that was happening with the children.
Sraddhalu (0:05:59):
So again we have to understand this in the context of the ashram, not in the context of normal society. What Mother tried to do, remember the goal for her, in the ashram before the families and children came, the ashram was a focal point for the new consciousness even to rise to a new breakthrough in a new humanity. And here the children come, and families come, Mother said it was an occasion for her to raise the children in the new values straight away from the beginning. While the children who had grown up elsewhere and came with all the wrong imprints, the false values of the old consciousness and they had to unlearn and relearn the new values. Here was a chance for children to grow up from the beginning into the new values. For which purpose, the parents became now a hindrance because they were busy trying to drill into them the old values and so she preferred to separate the children from the parents in order that they could grow into a completely different consciousness. Now as an example one of the things she did, she broke this idea of 'I am woman, you are man and as a woman I must become more feminine', so we had a girl who goes to the Mother and writes saying that 'you know, all this exercise that I'm doing with boys, it is making me grow my muscles and I will lose my femininity' and Mother says very sharply that, 'why don't you stop trying to be a girl or a boy and try to be a human being', and the idea in putting girls and boys equally in the physical training was to break this artificial division. Yes, eventually the women will still become women, men will still become men, but this consciousness that to be a woman you had to be frail, fragile, and dependent was a perversion of the old values. And in the new consciousness you had to become a unit of individuality in yourself to be a healthy woman, even as for a man to become independent in their identity in order to be able to have healthy relations with each other. So what she did here was to create a new humanity or a new value system to the extent that she could. To the extent that isolation was partial, you had all the other influences coming in. And one of the things she writes in one of, I think it was a conversation she had, she said, every time the children leave the ashram for the vacations.
Initially we had no vacations. All through, the school was there, all through the year. No holidays at all. Even Sunday you don't have a holiday for the physical training. You have a holiday for the mental training but you're supposed to use that time for different kinds of activities. On the first of the month there was a holiday only for the teachers to prepare the program for the rest of the month. But otherwise there is no holiday. Now why is this? She did not want any break and in the value system she is bringing in, holidays have zero meaning. In a spiritual life you have dedicated your life to something which is your life. Why do you need a holiday from what you are meant to do. If you think of it from the context of a job, the person needs a holiday because he hates doing what he is doing. But if he loves doing it then he is happy to keep doing it every day because that is his self-fulfillment. You don't need a holiday. So she was bringing in a whole new ideal and a whole new society that she was building. And then the parents insisted, especially parents who were not in Pondicherry, they said, we need to have our children come and meet us at least once a year and Mother gave in under pressure. She did not want and every time that she gave in, we see the loss that it has been. For so one and a half months in the peak of rainy season, November to mid of December we have the only holiday in the year. It's not tied to winter, it's not tied to summer, it's not tied to any festivals, it's just the time which was convenient and the children go and come back and Mother said about this. She said, 'every time the children go out and come back all the work that i have done for the last one year on them is washed away and lost and have to begin all over again from scratch, from zero'. Someone asked the Mother, but Mother why do you begin all over again? Why do you do this? She said, 'well, you don't know the limits of my patience'. That's the phrase she uses. 'You don't know the limits of my patience'. But consider what it meant. Here she is trying to build the new humanity, and the parents take them away, and wash off everything, and fill in with their junk, and come back. And she has to start all over again. Well, to the extent that she succeeded, and with the people that she succeeded, she has brought and established new values, which interestingly from the point she begins to establish in them, ripple out in the world and become the new values all over the world. Just as a quick sampling, the value that boys and girls should have equal training, including physically, now is a norm. It was not if you go back when she started this. For girls to do exercises, to practice in gymnastics, athletics, swimming and other competitions equally with boys again was not the norm and it has become the norm. To be doing exercises every day was never the norm in the world. People did exercises as a career path to be a bodybuilder or a fighter but normal man didn't do exercises normally. And even if they did only in their youth because they wanted to impress somebody and after that it was not part of normal life. Suddenly you find starting in the 60s, much more in the 70s and now it's the norm, every adult in the world is doing some kind of minimum exercise routine to make his body healthy, to improve quality of life. And here in the ashram she set this pattern from the earliest childhood from the point you enter kindergarten through till you are 90-95, even for the old people she had a set of exercises that they do to the extent that they are able to and no retirement age in the ashram. So she set certain values and many of those have got imprinted and universalized on earth. But this was the focal point in which she held humanity in her grip, so to say. So yes, children being separated from parents for this purpose, only because she said most parents are incompetent to raise the children and this is party of the discussion we should have some day, how to raise healthy children from a yogic perspective from a spiritual perspective.
Narad (0:12:52):
I want to go back just to modern India now. At least I have seen in modern India that the repression of young boys leads to a lot of homosexuality and looseness, we have an epidemic of AIDS, all these things are coming out.
Audience (0:13:22):
I have come to understand that this is because what Sri Aurobindo said, Buddhism disturbed the balance of the old Aryan world. And it's just that the monastic ideal, I mean, I grew as an 8 year old, 9 year old, 10 year old, the moment I start becoming aware of the values of life, I think that the aim of life is to become a sanyasi and naturally how can a sanyasi even think of sex? So it is going on for 2500 years, Buddhism, then Shankaracharya, illusionism, it's just hammered into you, the aim of life is to become a monk.
[Narad] I don't think that is...
[Audience] I grew up like that, I felt that that is the aim of life.
Sraddhalu (0:13:58):
It is mixed, the problem is, it is mixed. So what you have experienced in India now, today, is first, yes with the ascetic phase came the sharp cutting off of life from spiritual life, normal life and spiritual life. And with it came ‘sexual indulgence is unspiritual’ because it is not acceptable in the ascetic life and so on. But you see interestingly and we will discuss this later, in the systems of yoga that in certain practices of Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jnana Yoga, celibacy is not a requirement. When does it become a requirement and we'll take up that question later. But you have also spiritual paths which were acceptable in the householder's life and they became greatly valued for the householders at a certain phase, particularly last 500 years Bhakti Yoga and Karma Yoga became extremely important for this reason, because they could give to the householder a spiritual preparation. But still the ascetic remained the ideal. And in the modern India what you see is largely because of exposure to the West and Sri Aurobindo comments on this, the age of individualism and reason in India has been highly influenced by the Western model of individualism and reason. And the result is something which is not quite native to the Indian psyche. So it makes for someone who is half westernized in order to get individualized, but if he tries to become Indian, then he loses his individualization and so he is struggling between these two until he discovers his own innate way of becoming individual which is typical of the Indian psyche and not the model or repetition or a bad repetition of the Western model.
I had this discussion in certain groups which are working for service to the nation, particularly the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak, the RSS, that we had spoken of earlier and I spoke to them about this. I said, your entire training is to prepare people to serve the country. But you see the flaw, you do not have leaders. And if you do not have leaders, people need somebody as a focal point to assist in that process. You have not built leaders. And they said, but if we do that, then you will have somebody who will become dominating and it will spoil the whole work. And I said, no, that's the Western model of leadership. Where leadership is seen as somebody who dominates the team and the team is basically dragged against their will by various mechanisms of compulsion. But the true spiritual model of leadership, let's not even call it Indian, we go broader to the yogic model of leadership is what comes from your individuality spontaneously which includes everybody without contradicting and still the poise of leadership is required. So they do have leaders but by accident, not by design. By design, focus is service but the leadership is considered to be an aberration or if it forms, it is the way naturally it happened, we didn't focus on it. And to me that is a flaw in the focus and I discussed this with some of their senior people and some of them had this position that to do it would spoil the work, others agreed with it but why did this problem come, because of the ascetic background. The ascetic background does not allow the development of individuality because it would exaggerate the ego, so very early on you must learn to hold back, repress or suppress the individual development not to get too egoistic. On the other hand, if you take it from a healthy evolutionary perspective, you will say, yes, build your individuality to serve a greater ideal. That's the model Sri Aurobindo gives you. And he wrote this as a message, I believe it was to the students of Baroda College, where he said something to this effect that you must grow in wealth so that you will make India wealthy, you must grow in strength so that you will make India strong, you will grow in intelligence and skill so that you will make India greater. But the idea is your personal fulfillment which is a necessity of individualization and evolution is tied to a larger purpose and put in service to a larger cause but you still have the personal fulfillment and achievement.
This is flawed even in the ashram's educational system. Dr. Kirit Joshi was sharing with me the work he did with the Mother in building the whole system of education and he said we were able to go all the way to the age of let's say 17 or 18, but the last three years we did not have enough time to complete the building of the system, because by then Mother had withdrawn and soon after she left her body so that part was left flawed. I said well what is missing because I've been through that I know what it's like. He said that's the age when the individual comes into its own, to want to affirm itself in life. The Purushartha, the sense of personal fulfillment and achievement is the instinct and at that age we should be able to assist that to grow in a healthy way and that's not being done in the way it is now. What is done is a framework which is suddenly you are left open and free, you pick your teachers, choose your subjects, do what you like, but you are not assisted in building or directing that impulse. So that is still something that needs to be worked upon. But once you understand the rationale of the evolutionary growth, you can assist in building a healthy individuality and a healthy leadership which is inclusive. And then we find there are four kinds of leadership. There is the leadership which is the thought leadership, there is the leadership which is the vital leadership of someone who is the adventurer, who steps into danger before the rest, preparing the way and making it safe for them. And then there is the leadership which is of the organizer, the Vaishya, who becomes the leader in a different way to organize, to bring together resources, the link point of a network which links all the resources. And the fourth kind of leadership, which is through service, that you help others grow by serving and helping them in their growth and lead them. And each one uplifts the entire group while fulfilling himself in the process. And so this is a whole big discussion which one should have in the whole management framework of an integral management approach. But all of these ideas receded with the strong ascetic term and then with the strong Western influence which is kick-starting the individualization on a Western model, there is this indigestion. So among the young people now suddenly I have to be free, is to model the West. What? So sex, drugs, alcohol, what a liberated person in the West is doing, and the Western smoking, and in the West this is the value given. If you look at what happened in the 60s, the cigarette companies came to a brilliant idea. They said, how do we double our population of users? Women! No women were smoking, because everybody knew instinctively smoking is bad for the body and if you smoke, you are going to damage the DNA of the newborn baby who is going to follow, you are destroying your future generations. So women were not allowed to smoke, period. Society protected them because they were the future and so what the cigarette companies did, they presented smoking as the women's liberation. You see man is smoking and he stops you from smoking. To become free of the male domination you must smoke and affirm your individuality by smoking.
Narad (0:22:05):
Especially in movies. In the movies, they all smoked.
Audience (0:22:06):
And now there is this culture in the metros where the Indian girls, they feel very proud if they can smoke.
Sraddhalu (0:22:11):
The same idea comes into India now, through this distortion. But the idea that you rebel against an imposition, you come into your individuality and affirm your identity by smoking. Literally if you replace the word smoking by poisoning yourself, then you see what the logic is. It's not logical but it's very attractive. As a mechanism of publicity or as a way of shaping behavior, it is so seductive. I am my own person because I can smoke, because I can now drink alcohol, because now I can have drugs and once you have been infected that it's very difficult to undo it. But it can be undone but for that we need a public discourse and that's why this discussion is so important. So yes there is sexual repression but the correction of it is happening now by a repeat of the Western model which has failed in the West and we need now to go back to the Indian model where we put back sex, romance, family life, relationships generally in all their facets on the healthy base and with this deeper understanding of what it serves in the evolutionary process but what the evolution points to as its own higher fulfillment. And so yes, sex will be a part of the legitimate passage, it will serve its place but it's not the all and be all and end all. It's just one of the things which you pass through to higher things. And in the spiritual life therefore, what does it mean? This is very important for us. It can have its place in a person who aspires for spiritual life. Until such time as he outgrows the need for it, or until such time as he begins to experience his higher experiences conflicting with the sexual experience. When he has access to something else which is more valuable, against which this is no more valuable, the transition will take place quite spontaneously and there basic mechanisms of control and redirection of energy would be utilized, but in a very smooth and a rapid passage.
[Narad] The lower falls off.
Sraddhalu (0:24:26):
Yes, yes. The purification of the vital would lead to a dissolution of most of the problem. It may still remain as an embedded impulse, but then it's very easily manageable. So think of it this way. In the integral yoga, and let's look at it in this context, the base of the integral yoga is the triple path, Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Jnana yoga, which prepares you in a physical framework for the full focus of the transformation. To the extent that these three paths do not require celibacy, you are not required to be celibate. This triple path being like an overall base, a framework on which you turn your whole consciousness Godward, you do not need celibacy. The next stage where you enter into the integral yoga proper which is the yoga of transformation and self-perfection, at that point the base of that yoga is purification for which this triple path has already prepared you and made the first step and as a result of the purification, if you followed in the triple path, already you have shifted your desires, your emotions, your thoughts and your work to a higher ideal. To the extent that the sexual impulse remains, it becomes secondary, nominal even. And you could still have sexual relations with your wife or husband, no problem. It will not change anything in your spiritual progress. Then comes the next stage, the base of equality. Even at this stage, you do not need celibacy. Once you move beyond equality, now you begin to transform your consciousness. You begin to experience that certain activities, and I don't mean sex only, anger, any form of passion, any form of throwing out of energy, the spilling in the psychological form, which Sri Aurobindo spoke of, tends to make you lose something. And while initially you accept the loss because it's fun, you gossiped, it was fun, you come back and you feel something wasted, something missing in you, the concentration and purity you had is gone, you feel depleted and you don't like it because now you enjoy that state much more and then you avoid the gossip you avoid this, you avoid that and perhaps the sexual impulse gets rapidly modified. It takes the form of intimacy, closeness, sharing, even in a physical way, but the loss of substance or loss of energy becomes less and less until at some point it becomes even an irritant. Why am I still doing this? No more useful or interesting, I lose too much. It drops off.
So at this point I want to touch upon what happens in the loss. This is very important to recognize. What is lost? And there is a lot of confusion about this because you will see and I saw a discussion in one of the discussion groups of followers of Sri Aurobindo. Somebody quoted from Sri Aurobindo saying precisely this passage of continence and what it benefits and someone asked, 'but don't women have the same issue', and they said and again they quoted somebody, 'it is the sperm which has the life-giving power and that's being lost in the millions and so you're losing life energy', so someone said 'but women don't have that they lose it only if they lose one egg a month so they can have all the sex isn't it, without losing anything' and the whole thing comes from a wrong idea. Sri Aurobindo is very careful in his explanation. He says, what is thrown out by the body has two components. There is a component which is relevant for the procreation, that is the sperm and the egg. And then there is another component which is the substance used by the body to nourish itself and regenerate itself. That is what is harmful. You can lose all the sperm you want, the body is producing more, no problem. The eggs, there's millions of them, they're being dropped once a month, no problem. It is this substance which is lost. And when is it lost? It's not lost merely in the sexual act. It is lost in the state of sexual excitement. And this is a very important principle to recognize. If you really want to be able to contain the energy, you have to become conscious. You see in the male body when there is a state of sexual excitement, the body releases certain fluids in preparation for the sexual act. These fluids are very high in nutrition, they are the carriers for the sperm, they are also very high in alkaline content, they are meant to neutralize the acidity in the female body.
Similarly the female body also releases the same fluids. It is this which carries the nutrition which is lost, which is the substance that the body uses for its generation. Now you notice something very interesting. When you have cancer, the largest tendencies for cancer is before you hit puberty or after you cross the age of menopause or andropause. During the age when the sexual activity is strongest or the sexual energy is strongest, you do not find cancer happening so easily. And there is a connection. Because this is the substance used by the body to keep not only itself healthy, but to regenerate itself. It is the basis for the youth, not only of the body but also of the mind. When the substance drops drastically, the ability of the body to regenerate drops and cancer is one of the forms in which illness can creep in when the body can't replace or regenerate. So we come to a very interesting insight. The fluid lost is not the sperm production. In fact, the whole complex of other glands which release fluids, including the prostrate and the Bartholin's gland and various others and also material which is gathered by other glands which are thrown into the vesicles in which the semen is thrown out, but notice long before you have had the sexual contact, your body is begun to throw it out and at the same time in your aura or let's first take the body first, your body is beginning to perspire, it releases pheromones, what are pheromones? Think about it, remember what we discussed last time about gradations of substance which become finer and finer, almost of the grade of smell and their physical substance but there are the grade of smell very difficult to capture, you cannot capture pheromones and store them in a bottle. They are living material, they are life itself, and they do not last outside the body, they quickly degrade. So the body is releasing pheromones in your entire ambient space. Physically, your body is perspiring, salivating, all the glands which were so far containing and building material for body functions and regeneration are instinctively going loose and releasing. And this in the subtle bodies becomes the breaking down of the boundaries.
And all this is what we discussed last several sessions ago. The boundary breaking is the mechanism nature will use in the sexual act to form the joining energetic mix, which has also a huge exchange of subtle physical substance but also a huge exchange of the subconscious material. You literally acquire the other person's energy into you, your energy is thrown into the other, but the bubble of your individuality is broken, everything gathered is also spilt. Practically what it does? If you had just studied let's say a text and you are a student, you just studied intensely some new concepts of physics or music, you played the keyboard and you developed a skill in your fingers, now you just managed to make this extremely complex play of the notes. This is being held in your physical consciousness as an imprint of energy consciousness. When the body is spilling all this, this material is also thrown out. Interestingly, if you had any sexual throwing out soon after this learning, you come back and you realize you have to rebuild all over again. So almost as if the experiential content of it held in the body or in the subtler bodies is also thrown out. Of course, if you have mastered it, something of it stays, but the other may acquire from you in the exchange. Very interesting. In the blending that takes place, you may acquire the skill of the other or the other may acquire some skill from you and there is a transmission, but also enormous loss. If you understand this, you recognize what Sri Aurobindo means by the subtle act of throwing out. So if you read the line, he says, 'all passion, lust, desire, waste the energy by pouring it either in the gross form or a sublimated, subtler form, out of the body. Immorality of thought throws it out in the subtle form. And in either case, there is a waste and unchastities of the mind and speech as well as of the body'.
Once you recognize this, you notice what happens when you gossip. In the act of gossip, it is much more in the vital, mental region, not in the physical, but a similar spillage is taking place. Becoming conscious of this, you will realize that what is lost in the physical sexual act, okay, at a level of physical fluid, is one part but there is so much more which is valuable on these other levels which also is thrown out, which you wish you did not lose but which you can throw out even without a sexual act. I have seen for example people they go into a space where there is a huge blending of energy taking place they come out fully infected with that energy and they have lost what they had, their individuality is gone, this often happens in certain kinds of parties, clubs, even I have seen in public functions, where you sit in a mixed type but where there is some kind of interchange taking place. It is different when we are all listening to one person. It has different value. But when there is social interchange taking place and the casual chit-chat, you come out with this blended energy equivalent to having a sexual act but without the sharp breaking of the boundaries, but it is still broken, it's still mixed in heavily and if you came with something valuable, you would easily dissipate it. Now in spiritual terms see what happens, let's say you just had a deep experience of some kind, you awakened to something deeper or higher. It's still living within you as a force. You go into this space, you come out, you've lost it. You went indulgent gossip, you come out, you've lost it. Because this is being held in a much higher grade of substance. So spiritually the loss can be so high that you don't want to do these things anymore. It has nothing to do with sex. The value of what is lost is on other levels, of course the physical sexual act may also involve loss of that, generally does but you can lose it in many other ways. So what is lost purely in physical terms and then extending all the way to these gradations, if you become conscious of it then we begin to contain, then we begin to now value and everything begins to change in our priorities.
Narad (0:36:40):
What does the vital magnetism of these evangelistic creatures do to these huge crowds, where somebody can walk, who couldn't walk before?
Sraddhalu (0:36:44):
So often we have examples of people with great vitality, evangelicals typically become evangelicals because they have that vitality and which has with it a certain hypnotic power, charisma and they are able to throw it out onto a group and get them excited. Often it is done by a being that may attach itself to them, when they have a personal ambition, then a being which is associated with that kind of ambition will join with them. Sometimes they may be themselves vital beings who have taken birth in the human body, who come for this purpose and sometimes they may be Asuric beings also, benevolent or Asuric. The fact that there is either a direct incarnation or a partial alignment with some vital being gives to them that massive charismatic influence. If there is not that kind of support, an individual doesn't have enough vitality to contain and manage such large crowds. It's the reason why very often you will see they have exaggerated egos, exaggerated vitality and with it uncontrolled exaggerated vitalities also, which is why they have all kinds of other problems.
Audience (0:37:57):
I was just saying how to re-compensate for the loss through higher means.
Sraddhalu (0:38:02):
So just to complete this discussion, but the same kind of vitality could be built up if your physical base has been with contained energy and you continue to build upon it, you can grow as Sri Aurobindo speaks of here, this tremendous power of effectuation and of success. The vitality grows on the base of this gathered continents, but you can draw equally from energy from above into the container now which is stable and complete. If your container breaks, then what you bring down from above can also spill. But if the container now is strongly built and not with holes, not frequently broken by acts which dissipate or spill out, then into this something from above can begin to pour in. So here comes an interesting idea. So we spoke of the gradations, how from Retas we grow through Tejas, Vidyut into Ojas. But if Ojas is physical substance that is almost of a spiritual character, there is spiritual energy from above which has almost of a physical character, which can descend from above. Now the two can meet. If that alone descends from above, you still have a gap in between. If there is from below also the building and from above the descending, the two meeting, then from above a lot can pour down. Not only the content of the ojas grade of energy, but the content of the Vidyut grade of energy, Tejas grade of energy, filling from above can enormously amplify all these powers and faculties leading to effectively what brahmacharya would take you in a thousand years but within a few days. You see the build up from below is a very slow process. It has its value, especially in the early stage when the body is developing. But once it has built up enough, it in itself cannot nourish enough, especially those who do not have very strong base of physical vitality or energy. They can only grow up to a point until something from above begins to descend and then if not for this evolution couldn't go very far. But and then because of this descent a thousand times more can come down in a single descent. The question is can you contain it? Is your container strong enough, healthy enough and which will not spill?
So I give an example again. I was in Bombay in some weird, my host had taken me to a weird gathering. These were people who were in some party and the person whose house we had gone to was drinking and I think he crossed the boundary where he lost his control and he was sitting next to me because I was like the guest, honored guest. So then he said, 'oh let me to all tell you a story. I went to the ashram, Sri Aurobindo ashram once'. So he got everybody's attention and then he was trying to embarrass me. He said, you know I was in Chennai, I went to the ashram and it was a spiritual place, I felt very good, I felt very nice and then I came back to Chennai and I had very strong sexual urges. How can you explain that going to an ashram I got strong sexual urges and then he looks at me and laughs. So I said, ‘well you went to a place which had very high energy. Spiritual energy is still energy. You receive the energy, but then it's your choice whether you direct the energy upward for your growth or you turn it downward into expelling it’. So he was embarrassed. It was not nice maybe in the context socially, but I thought I had to say it at least for the others who might have got otherwise confused. But the idea is this, if you have a strong descent of energy and your container is weak, it can often lead to strong heightened sexual desire because that's how your body knows that state of energy to be, 'Oh yeah, now I'm pretty full, I need to burst it out and throw it out' or the vital gets now suddenly heightened to a degree that it cannot hold and it must spill out by speech, by anger, by gossip, by sex, any other form.
Narad (0:42:28):
What about physical breakdown?
Sraddhalu (0:42:30):
Physical breakdowns, yes, that's an important point.
Sraddhalu (0:42:37):
So, one of the forms we find in the stories is of a Rishi who has a great power of tapas and throws it out in a curse. And it's again, what happens in the curse, it's very similar to a physical expulsion, same as anger, same as a physical ejaculation in the sexual act. The pattern is the same. You gather the energy and then, phew, throw it out. Against what? For what? Sexual act is pleasurable, the anger act is satisfying to your ego, the curse gives satisfaction to your self-importance, but always it's the same act, gathered energy thrown out and then you are depleted, you just lost what you had built up. The same energy gathered and held would have given you so much more but you also spoke of physical breakdown. If too much descends, your body cannot contain or your vital cannot contain or your mind cannot contain, or any of these in combination. If your mind cannot contain, one of the things which happens is you feel as if you are spaced out, you are unable to function. So Sri Aurobindo's narration of a man who came to him, this was in the early days before the ashram was formed, he came to Sri Aurobindo and said, ‘I want to experience silence of mind’. So Sri Aurobindo said, ‘okay sit down’ and he went on reading his newspaper. The fellow sat down, eyes closed and after a while he suddenly jumped up and said, 'I'm going mad, I'm going mad', and he ran away. And Sri Aurobindo says, this is what happens when a person is not ready. You can give silence of mind, he could give it just like that, he can still give it just like that, to all of us. When he gives it, what do you do? Do you get overwhelmed? Or you get spaced out and you say, 'let me get back to my normal activity' and bring back the mind.
Okay, in the vital, similar exaggeration of the energy will mean you feel 'I am so powerful, I am so great' and either the vital now begins to behave irrationally in an aberration dominating or the ego inflates or the same thing could happen in the nerves. If in the nerves you find this exaggeration beyond the nerves ability, the body begins to break down and you have aberrations of behavior or loss of, what do you say, you go mad or you get unbalanced in some way. If the body breaks down, it falls sick. Interestingly, by excess of spiritual descent, your body could fall sick if it is too weak and so what do you do? You contain, you limit, you narrow down what descends to meet what your vehicle, your container can hold and that's why the initial phase of the brahmacharya, celibacy is extremely valuable if you used it to build the container to make it as solid and strong as possible. Having made it strong, now something higher can descend and use this to build it and make it more strong, more complete and help it to grow more rapidly. But the idea is this, a descent from above can do far more than what you would do over weeks and months of celibacy. I give one more example of this. This is a person who is into the martial arts and he is really into building his higher faculties, including the power of directing the mind and vital to influence objects, even to move objects and he is able to do that to some extent. I think he is using certain forms of Chinese martial art. And so when I met him he was talking about his training. He had a cold and he said it's the first time I have a cold in so many years. Because of something, because of travel, something happened, he dipped and he couldn't contain and he said because of this one cold for so many days I have lost one year of build-up of my material and energy. Now think about what that means. If your only base is building from below, one cold can make you lose it all. It's not worth it. And yet this base building up would prepare a basis on which something higher can be brought down and then one year's work could be acquired in a single day or in a few minutes. This is what is important for us. And in the integral yoga, increasingly it is the action of the descending Shakti upon which we rely and not on our own strength and these slow bottom up methods. Even in terms of what it implies for the awakening of the Kundalini, it is a top down descent which purifies, opens the chakras and bridges the Kundalini with the higher consciousness.
So to put in context now, celibacy is critical in paths which work directly on awakening the Kundalini or the chakras, because then the energy cannot be thrown out, it must be contained and taken up. It is not critical in paths which are primarily purification methods like Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Jnana Yoga. In Kundalini yoga it is critical, in advanced hatha yoga it is critical, but again in very prior early stages of basic asanas, pranayam, it doesn't matter. Once you move into advanced practices of pranayama with the Moola Bandha and the energy blocks by which the lower energy is turned upward, then celibacy can become important. And in the Integral yoga again in the early stages all the way through to a pretty later stage it doesn't matter. If you can contain and build, certainly it's a great help but if you cannot, it doesn't matter, work on the preparation and purification until automatically the issue becomes irrelevant and you move on to something which is for you more valuable. So I think this puts the whole thing in context.
Sraddhalu (0:49:07):
In the integral yoga, it has a further value when we enter into the physical consciousness for transformation. Though you could take this as a late stage of the yoga, when you work on the physical consciousness and the subtle physical for its spiritualization, or if you are so inclined, you can work upon it from the beginning, as part of your initial preparatory movement, to make the body itself more conscious, to awaken in the body the psychic influence and even to bring into it the receptivity of the spiritual force. Once you begin to work on this, automatically you will discover first that the sexual act makes you lose the work which was built and you have as if to start afresh all over again. But also as a result of this work, the sexual act does not feel for the body so interesting anymore because now it is enjoying something else which is more valuable.
Similarly, if you are working to open to the psychic influence, then the sexual act involves a vibration which is extremely crude and coarse, equivalent to raw anger in terms of vibration except it's pleasurable, but that has the effect also of blocking and closing the psychic gates. I'll share an example here. This is from a person who came to the ashram in 1971, now in Auroville, and he narrated how his first meeting with the Mother, she opened the psychic center, and after that he said for the next two years, any time in the day or night, I was conscious of this presence. And he literally saw it as a flame, as a presence within. And then at the end of those two years, he got involved with somebody in the ashram. And it was not his fault. She was the one who was seductive type. And he fell for her. And he said his first sexual experience, the whole thing shut and he lost it. For 20 or 30 years he was waiting for it. He couldn't do it on his own. And so of course he could have, there were ways if he had known what to do. By then Mother had left her body so he couldn't know what to do. But what was wrong there? Again if you go back to the earlier discussion, it's not the sexual act in itself, it is the quality of vibration of a coarse, crude, instinctive drive which shakes up the whole nervous system, shakes up the vital body, breaks all the boundaries, exteriorizes you and binds you in the pleasure sensation of the most outer coarse form. The result was all this exaggeration rising like dust clouded and covered up the purity of the psychic which withdrew immediately because it does not allow itself to be polluted by the contrary vibration. If he had worked to quiet it, become still and clear and held his aspiration, it would have come forward again. But he got lost in that and then he lost this and he couldn't get out of that so it took a different direction in his life. But again we recognize that It's not celibacy which gave him the experience, you see people can be celibate for the whole of their life and have zero spiritual experience. It's not celibacy which is an end in itself at best. It is a means and as a means, it is again not essential. It is extremely helpful, but not essential depending on human types, body types, mind types and immediate priorities. I will go so far as to say that if your self-realization or living in the self was dependent on your body being celibate, then the self would be a tool of the body's celibacy. It's ridiculous, it's illogical. You can live in a spiritual consciousness, you can live in a liberated consciousness, you can live in the self, you can live in the psychic consciousness and still have sex and not lose any of it. What you would lose is the body's ability to participate in that because of the dulling effect or the clouding in your emotions through which the light of your higher spiritual experience would get muddied when it tried to express itself in actions. So for example, such a person may live in a liberated consciousness, but the clouding that comes from the sexual act, however momentary, would mean that at that time if he tries to bring the light through, it would tend to become mixed. The purity of its action would be dulled or clouded or deviated, but because he has his greater purity, he could also bring the cloud back to calm and clarity much more quickly. And such a person could then indulge freely even in the sexual act and face no consequence at all and still maintain the poise of purity. What does that mean?
So I come to the last example of this. We have the story of Sri Krishna. I don't have the exact story, maybe you know it better, but it goes something like this. Sri Krishna was supposed to be dallying with so many women. He had so many gopis and all that. You have the story? So somebody in the conversation, in the tradition, is asked, who is the greatest brahmachari and it is Shri Krishna. Because although he may have any number of relations with women, his consciousness is always turned up and awakened. So there is a term used in the yoga tradition which is called 'urdhva retas'. That is the entire retas energy is turned upward and stays upward, is never lost. One can technically, practically enter even sexual relations without losing that upward turn. It would be equivalent to the body giving blood. Now you can give blood, the body experiences a depletion, it will have physical consequences, but your consciousness can still remain clear. Maybe you can't go running a marathon after donating 2 liters of blood, but you can still be clear and conscious and fully active in your cognitive faculties. And it's something like that. There is a depletion at the level at which the material is lost, but in terms of your consciousness, nothing changes. You are still as free as you always were. If this were not possible, then we would say spirituality is trapped by biological processes or compulsions which cannot be the case.
Audience (0:56:07):
In the case of old rishis who were asked to come for ‘niyoga’, like Vyasa, or some cases where the rakshasis or the bad women, they sought the rishis like Ravana's mother. His father was a rishi, but she sought him because he was a rishi and she forced him to impregnate basically.
Sraddhalu (0:56:15):
So we had examples again in the tradition of rishis, who were asked to impregnate, especially in the royal families, so that the seed would carry something of the spiritual power or potential. And yes, these things do matter. So modern understanding of genetics is very poor, very shallow. It only looks at the molecular structure of the genetic base of the spiral but in fact around it is the whole epigenetics associated with it which is also transmitted along with the genes and around it immersed in it is a large part of subtle physical substance and higher gradations of substance which are also thrown out. That's what we were discussing earlier for the purpose of the higher nourishment of the bodies. But all that material now goes as the seed. So a person who has an intense spiritual energy, impregnating with that intention would also infuse that spiritual power into the child which will be born. So it would often be the case when the king was found to be unable to bear a child, the queen would be sent to a great rishi to be impregnated for this purpose so that the child may be exceptional. And yes these things are done. In some cases when they were in intense concentration of tapasya, they would say, 'no, but the queen won't be able to bear my power'. And this is the case which happens in the Mahabharata. And the first queen, she turns white, feeling his intensity and the child is born with some sickness of the skin. Another queen turns away from him covering her eyes because he is too brilliant in his energy and her child is born blind. So the idea is what is impregnated is the state of consciousness not only of the father in this case but also the mother who is receiving. Her state of consciousness is joining to form this.
Narad (0:58:22):
What about the DNA in the Nazi failure. I mean they tried to create a new Aryan race by impregnating the women with the perfect bodies of men and it failed.
Sraddhalu (0:58:39):
We can't say it failed. As an experiment, the form of it failed but the principle of it is valid. If you take people who are healthy, you will have better genes. Sri Aurobindo points to the modern rapid increase of illnesses and says two reasons. The first reason is bad genetics. In the past they would give great importance to this, that they would pick somebody who was healthy in genetics. There were many biological markers. So unfortunately what happened during the Nazi period of Nazi rule, this knowledge was taken and it was used to justify the sense of superiority at a racial level and therefore the domination of one race by another. That being the falsehood, the knowledge which was misused was still valid and that knowledge can be used without this aberration of dominance, by recognizing that yes, we should become conscious of it. And now we have also the tools by which we can intervene to modify the genetics. It opens a very dangerous space where recently in China, a genetically modified baby was born in which they removed certain genes which would make it vulnerable to HIV but the same technology could be used to choose the color of the eyes, to increase intelligence, to increase physical strength, etc. What does it mean, if we can actually intervene genetically to improve the genetic stock? The problem is we don't know, because we are still operating at a very crude physical level, we are not taking into account the psychological components. And so at a crude physical level, yes, you can change certain things but with that exaggeration on a physical level what is the quality of psychological energy, it could turn Asuric equally. Whereas in the old way, you saw the person and a person of goodness with strength now impregnating would transmit something of the sense of the goodness and so although you have a better stock genetically it would have a positive turn. So these are the things humanity will have to face but this deeper understanding of it will help us to maybe chart out a safer route than the dangerous experiments we are making now. You want to make some comments in closing?
Narad (1:01:13):
To fully comprehend what Sraddhalu has given us, it is important to see all six lectures. Because you cannot take everything from one talk. One needs to see all six.