Sex and Spirituality

Sex and Spirituality

November 2007

By Swami Veda Bharati

Celibacy strengthens prana and the mind field, but sattvic lovemaking also has spiritual benefits One of the major causes of the weakening of prana, and consequently of the mind field, is sexual wastage of energy. Such wastage occurs if the urge is not regularized or channeled, excessively indulged, and especially if it is not accompanied with deep love and reverence.

Even married couples control the sexual urge in many ways. They abstain from sex with everyone but each other. Many Indians refrain during certain days of the feminine cycle per month, as well as after pregnancy. Most also abstain during fasting days and pilgrimages as well as on nights before yajnas and special pujas. These celebrations of samyama, self-control, are designed so that the habit of restraint is strengthened and the will tested. It also teaches us to sacrifice, to make our lower selves an offering unto our higher selves in divinity. It enables the energy and the consciousness of our lower chakras to ascend to the higher ones. And finally, it reinforces the recognition that we are not the body.

That which so fully makes us identify with the body can be brought under control, making smooth the path to spiritual Self-realisation. Serious practitioners of meditation know that meditating when the sexual urge is strongest leads to a more intense and deep meditation. The very stimuli, such as touch, can generate an upward energy flow in the initiated. In fact, the arising of apparent sexual desire invokes a meditative state. This proves that control of the sexual urge can strengthen prana and the mind. The glow on the face of a celibate is further proof of this. Intermittent celibacy even within marriage is a more intensive form of the practice of silence and fasting. Fasting includes silence and celibacy. Silence includes fasting and celibacy. Celibacy includes fasting and silence. It is all a system of triune silence, or triune fasting, or triune celibacy. Name one and the other two are included. The benefits to prana and mind field derived from one are the same as from the other two. Each one is supported by the other two; each two are part of the one. In my own experience I have found silence, celibacy and fasting – in the sense of controlled intake – to play a major role in self-healing during illness, and also to be highly conducive to deeper meditation, and the power to grant initiations. However, self-controlled sexual experience also has spiritual benefits. It helps us realise the truth of the principle that two are essentially one, that there is a unity in the diversity. It makes us realise within ourselves the presence of the ardhanarishvara, the equilibrium between our male and female halves.

At the moment of the climax, ida and pingala breaths momentarily reach an equilibrium and the sushumna breath flows. Both nostrils flow with an equal force. We are therefore reminded that the experience of samadhi – in which the sushumna flows thus for hours at a time – is something far superior and to be aspired for. These spiritual benefits accrue only if we know that the sexual experience is not primarily an experience of certain sensations in some parts of the body but an intermingling of the prana, subtle bodies and the very mindforce of two. It is also important that the sexual experience is primarily an expression of sattvic love and not rajasic agitations. When it is thus an expression of, nay, immersion into, sattvic love, it may even serve to enhance the prana and mind field.

Let us not forget that it was a highly realised yogi like Vatsyayana who composed texts like the Kamasutra, because this work was within the context of the four-fold human purpose, purushartha, that starts with dharma and ends with moksha. Eventually, a fortunate few will transcend the need even for sattvic love-making, which becomes instead a trigger for meditation.