Desire—Food—Sex
Page-4
I
have stated very briefly in my previous letter my position
with regard to the sex impulse and Yoga. I may add here
that my conclusion is not founded on any mental opinion
or preconceived moral idea, but on probative facts and on
observation and experience. I do not deny that so long as
one allows a sort of separation between inner experience
and outer consciousness, the latter being left as an inferior
activity controlled but not transformed, it is quiet possible
to have spiritual experiences and make progress without
any entire cessation of the sex activity. The mind separates
itself from the outer vital (life-parts) and the physical
consciousness and lives its own inner life. But only a few
can really do this with any completeness and the moment
one's experiences extend to the life-plane and the physical,
sex can no longer be treated in this way. It can become
at any moment a disturbing, upsetting and deforming force.
I have observed that to an equal extent with ego (pride,
vanity, ambition) and rajasic greeds and desires it is one
of the main causes of the spiritual casualties that have
taken place in sadhana. The attempt to treat it by detachment
without complete excision breaks down; the attempt to sublimate
it, favoured by many modern mystics in Europe, is a most
rash and perilous experiment. For it is when one mixes up
sex and spirituality that there is the greatest havoc. Even
the attempt to sublimate it by turning it towards the Divine
as in the Vaishnava madhura bhava carries in it a
serious danger, as the results of a wrong turn or use in
this method so often show. At any rate in this Yoga which
seeks not only the essential experience of the Divine but
a transformation of the whole being and nature, I have found
it an absolute necessity of the sadhana to aim at a complete
mastery over the sex-force: otherwise the vital consciousness
remains a turbid mixture, the turbidity affecting the purity
of the spiritualised mind and seriously hindering the upward
turn of the forces of the body. This Yoga demands a full
ascension of the whole lower or ordinary consciousness to
join the spiritual above it and a full descent of the spiritual
(eventually of the supramental) into the mind, life and
body to transform it. The total ascent is impossible so
long as sex-desire blocks the way; the descent is dangerous
so long as sex-desire is powerful in the vital. For at any
moment an unexcised or latent sex-desire may be the cause
of a mixture which throws back the true descent and uses
the energy acquired for other purposes or turns all the
action of the consciousness towards wrong experience, turbid
and delusive. One must, therefore, clear this obstacle out
of the way; otherwise there is either no safety or no free
movement towards finality in the sadhana.
The
contrary opinion of which you speak may be due to the idea
that sex is a natural part of the human vital-physical whole,
a necessity like food and sleep, and that its total inhibition
may lead to unbalancing and to serious disorders. 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 I have observed that 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,—
I do not think harm ever occurs when there is a true spiritual
effort at mastery and abstinence. It is now held by many
medical men in Europe that sexual abstinence, if it is genuine,
is beneficial; for the element in the retas which
serves the sexual act is then changed into its other element
which feeds the energies of the system, mental vital and
physical—and that justifies the Indian idea of Brahmacharya,
the transformation of retas into ojas and
the raising of its energies upward so that they change into
a spiritual force.
As
for the method of mastery, it cannot be done by physical
abstinence alone—it proceeds by a process of combined
detachment and rejection. The consciousness stands back
from the sex-impulse, feels it as not its own, as something
alien thrown on it by Nature-force to which it refuses assent
or identification—each time a certain movement of rejection
throws it more and more outward. The mind remains unaffected;
after a time the vital being which is the chief support
withdraws from it in the same way, finally the physical
consciousness no longer supports it. This process continues
until even the subconscient can no longer rouse it up in
the dream and no further movement comes from the outer Nature-force
to rekindle this lower fire. This is the course when the
sex propensity sticks obstinately; but there are some who
can eliminate it decisively by a swift radical dropping
away from the nature. That, however, is more rare.
It
has to be said that the total elimination of the sex-impulse
is one of the most difficult things in sadhana and one must
be prepared for it to take time. But its total disappearance
has been achieved and a practical liberation crossed only
by occasional dream-movements from the subconscient is fairly
common.
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Sri Aurobindo
