Desire—Food—Sex
Page-5
As to sexual impulse. Regard it not as something sinful
and horrible and attractive at the same time, but as a mistake
and wrong movement of the lower nature. Reject it entirely,
not by struggling with it, but by drawing back from it,
detaching yourself and refusing your consent; look at it
as something not your own, but imposed on you by a force
of Nature outside you. Refuse all consent to the imposition.
If anything in your vital consents, insist on that part
of you withdrawing its consent. Call in the Divine Force
to help you in your withdrawal and refusal. If you can do
this quietly and resolutely and patiently, in the end your
inner will will prevail against the habit of the outer nature.
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Sri Aurobindo
There
is no reason to be depressed to this extent or to have these
imaginations about failure in the Yoga. It is not at all
a sign that you are unfit for the Yoga. It simply means
that the sexual impulse rejected by the conscious parts
has taken refuge in the subconscient, somewhere probably
in the lower vital-physical and the most physical consciousness
where there are some regions not yet open to the aspiration
and the light. The persistence in sleep of things rejected
in the waking consciousness is a quite common occurrence
in the course of sadhana.
The remedy is:
(i) to get he higher consciousness, its light and the workings
of its power down into the obscurer parts of the nature,
(ii) to become progressively more conscious in sleep, with
an inner consciousness which is aware of the working of
the sadhana in sleep as in waking,
(iii) to bring to bear the waking will and aspiration on
the body in sleep.
One way to do the last is to make a strong and conscious
suggestion to the body, before sleeping, that the thing
should not happen; the more concrete and physical the suggestion
can be made and the more directly on the sexual center,
the better. The effect may not be quiet immediate at first
or invariable; but usually this kind of suggestion, if you
know how to make it, prevails in the end: even when it does
not prevent the dream, it very often awakes the consciousness
within in time to prevent untoward consequences.
It
is a mistake to allow yourself to be depressed in the sadhana
even by repeated failures. One must be calm, persistent
and more obstinate than the resistance.
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Sri Aurobindo
The
trouble of the sex-impulse is bound to dwindle away if you
are in earnest about getting rid of it. The difficulty is
that part of your nature (especially, the lower vital and
the subconscient which is active in sleep) keeps the memory
and attachment to these movements, and you do not open these
parts and make them accept the Mother's Light and Force
to purify them. If you did that and, instead of lamenting
and getting troubled and clinging to the idea that you cannot
get rid of these things, insisted quietly with a calm faith
and patient resolution on their disappearance, separating
yourself from them, refusing to accept them or at all regard
them as part of yourself, they would after a time lose their
force and dwindle.
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Sri Aurobindo
The
sex-trouble is serious only so long as it can get the consent
of the mind and the vital will. If it is driven from the
mind, that is, if the mind refuses its consent, but the
vital part responds to it, it comes as a large wave of vital
desire and tries to sweep the mind away by force along with
it. If it is driven also from the higher vital, from the
heart and the dynamic possessive life-force, it takes refuge
in the lower vital and comes in the shape of smaller suggestions
and urges there. Driven from the lower vital level, it goes
down into the obscure inertly repetitive physical and comes
as sensations in the sex center and a mechanical response
to suggestion. Driven from there too, it goes down into
the subconscient and comes up as dreams and night-emissions
even without dreams. But to whatever it recedes, it tries
still for a time from that base or refuge to trouble and
recapture the assent of the higher parts, until the victory
is complete and it is driven even out of the surrounding
or environmental consciousness which is the extension of
ourselves into the general or universal Nature.
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Sri Aurobindo
When
the psychic puts its influence on the vital, the first thing
you must be careful to avoid is any least mixture of a wrong
vital movement with the psychic movement. Lust is the perversion
or degradation which prevents love from establishing its
reign; so when there is the movement of psychic love in
the heart, lust or vital desire is the one thing that must
not be allowed to come in—just as when strength comes
down from above, personal ambition and pride have to be
kept far away from it; for any mixture of the perversion
will corrupt the psychic or spiritual action and prevent
a true fulfillment.
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Sri Aurobindo
Pranayama
and other physical practices like Asana do not necessarily
root out sexual desire—sometimes by increasing enormously
the vital force in the body they can even exaggerate in
a rather startling way the force too of the sexual tendency,
which, being at the base of the physical life, is always
difficult to conquer. The one thing to do is to separate
oneself from these movements, to find one's inner-self and
live in it; these movements will not then any longer appear
as belonging to oneself but as surface impositions of the
outer Prakriti upon the inner self or Purusha. They can
then be more easily discarded or brought to nothing.
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Sri Aurobindo
This
kind of sexual attack through sleep does not depend very
much on food or anything else that is outward. It is a mechanical
habit in the subconscient; when the sexual impulse is rejected
or barred out in the waking thoughts and feelings, it comes
in this form in sleep, for then there is only the subconscient
at work and there is no conscious control. It is a sign
of sexual desire suppressed in the waking mind and vital,
but not eliminated in the stuff of the physical nature.
To
eliminate it one must first be careful to harboure no sexual
imagination or feeling in the waking state, next, to put
a strong will on the body and especially on the sexual center
that there should be nothing of the kind in sleep. This
may not succeed at once, but if persevered in for a long
time, it usually has a result; the subconscient begins to
obey.
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Sri Aurobindo
Hurting
the flesh is no remedy for sex impulse, though it may be
a temporary diversion. It is the vital and mostly the vital
physical that takes the sense-perception as pleasure or
otherwise.
Reduction
of diet has not usually a permanent effect. It may give
a greater sense of physical or vital-physical purity, lighten
the system and reduce certain kinds of tamas. But
the sex-impulse can very well accommodate itself to a reduced
diet. It is not by physical means but by a change in the
consciousness that these things can be surmounted.
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Sri Aurobindo
Your
difficulty in getting rid of the aboriginal in your nature
will remain so long as you try to change your vital part
by the sole or main strength of your mind and mental will,
calling in at most an indefinite and impersonal divine power
to aid you. It is an old difficulty which has never been
radically solved in life itself because it has never been
met in the true way. In many ways of Yoga it does not so
supremely matter because the aim is not a transformed life
but withdrawal from life. When that is the object of an
endeavour, it may be sufficient to keep the vital down by
a mental and moral compulsion, or else it may be stilled
and kept lying in a kind of sleep and quiescence. There
are some even who allow it to run and exhaust itself if
it can while its possessor professes to be untouched and
unconcerned by it; for it is only old Nature running on
by a past impetus and will drop off with the fall of the
body. When none of these solutions can be attained, the
sadhak sometimes simply leads a double inner life, divided
between his spiritual experiences and his vital weaknesses
to the end, making the most of his better part, making as
little as may be of the outer being. But none of these methods
will do for our purpose. If you want a true mastery and
transformation of the vital movements, it can be done only
on condition you allow your psychic being, the soul in you,
to awake fully, to establish its rule and opening all to
the permanent touch of the Divine Shakti, impose its own
way of pure devotion, whole-hearted aspiration and complete
uncompromising urge to all that is divine on the mind and
heart and vital nature. There is no other way and it is
no use hankering after a more comfortable path. Nänyah
panthä vidyate ayanäya.
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Sri Aurobindo
