Understanding lust and dealing with it

 

Lust is one such distortion of love. Lust can be got rid of through the light of pragmatic knowledge, lust means wanting to grab or possess something and it enters your life because you have lost the tendency to give the tendency to love when love is at an all-time low, then lust climbs higher when love is at the top, then lust diminishes.  Love is to have the sincere feeling. I'm here for you. Lust is the feeling - "What can I get from you?"

Lust has created humongous problems in the world, and many crimes have happened or are happening today because of uncontrolled lust. It has spoiled relationships. One of the reasons for bitterness in the world is the lack of control over oneself. What happens due to a lack of spirituality? The intense joy or pleasure one experiences with your partner can turn bitter and cause heartbreak, if there is no wisdom. 

This is what is happening all over, isn't it? Someone has given you intense pleasure and if you have no wisdom, you will find them to be the cause of intense misery also. If you feel miserable, you do not look at the case, you rather point a finger towards the one who has given you physical pleasure. It is wisdom that takes you away from misery. Observing the sensations within you, whether of pain or pleasure, offers a different view altogether about the entire phenomenon.

How to deal with lust? Through higher fulfilment. For example, kids crave for cotton, candy and chocolates. But when they grow up, they automatically have no such cravings. Similarly, having a higher goal in life will help when you have a lot of work to do. Sex doesn't bother you at that time. 

Just ask any student if he or she is bombarded with thoughts of sex during exam time. They'll say no. For that whole month, when they have to achieve something, their mind is fully focused on it. Not once does the thought arise during exam time. They have a bundle of books to read and prepare. So engaging yourself in some creative activity is helpful.

Pleasure always makes you run towards it first and then later on makes you run away from it. That is its nature. First, you crave for it, you go towards it and then later on, you go away from it, because it becomes too much to handle. 

Yoga is that which makes you centered. It stabilizes you. When you are stable and centered, if there is pleasure you enjoy it, if it's not there, you don't mind it. It's not occupying your mind, 24*7. It's not a craving that bothers you. 

The more you indulge in lust, the more the stimuli. With excess stimulation, your head becomes hot and your vision blurred. This directly affects your perception, making it blurred too.  People should stop watching pornography, thinking about sex and watching it all the time really destroys the instrument called the brain at the same time. 

You shouldn't blame sex. It's a natural phenomenon and all living beings originate from it. Your origin is sex, but let it not be your death too. If one is promiscuous, their death will also be sex. It's just a part of life and should be treated so. Being very natural and moderate with sex is the key.

Sex is not a hindrance on the path

Sex is where life originates in the Orient. It is honoured as divine sexuality. It is in the second chakra, and then you move up to the other chakras. Spirituality does not disown anything or dissociate from anything. Spirituality encompasses all aspects of life. In fact, spirituality uplifts one from sex to the higher consciousness.

Sex is being attracted to a part of the body and getting some stimulation from it. The goal of sex is to find joy and not sex itself. It is to get into that moment. Forget about everything and find joy. Spirituality provides that joy, a joy, which is not through some act but a joy that is beyond the senses.

Any enjoyment or pleasure is spending energy when you spend a lot of energy. Then you do not have enough energy left to take you to your centre. That is the only reason why sex, food, too much sleep or watching television continuously or doing too much of any activity will be a hindrance on this path, to be in the hollow and empty space inside you. It is because you are not used to going deep inside of yourself that you are not in the centre; you are not calm, serene or subtle.

To be something that you're not used to being, needs some energy. It needs some effort and it is an effort to become effortless. So during this period of time, it is better to abstain from talking and all other activities like too much sex, over-eating, too much sleep, etc. Otherwise, the relationship you are in is not a hindrance for your spiritual growth or meditation. 

Sex is not a hindrance, provided both partners are on the same path; both are in a balanced state of mind and have a common goal, purpose and are engaged in service. Sex is nothing but a little stimulation on the level of the body, it gives you a "high" for a few minutes, and that's it. There's no big deal about it.

The need for a physical high will automatically reduce once you feel the inner fountain of love flowing from. You are the source of that love. The stimulation of the self is so strong that the stimulation in the body is nothing in comparison to it. The tickle of the soul is so strong that the sensations in the body don't come anywhere close to it.

It is not that one is against the other, or one creates some problem for the other. When you realise consciousness is beyond the physical body, then you go beyond the gross pleasures. You have been trying to know the male and the female in so many lifetimes - animal and human. If you just want to know sexual pleasures, then keep knowing them. But for how long? At some point of time, you will say "Enough is enough." That is when the mind will turn inward.

That is why it is said a minute of samadhi is equivalent to 1000 units of sex. The amount of joy you get in one minute of samadhi is thousand times more than the joy you get in a minute of sex and that one minute of samadhi is equivalent to a billion years of rest.

So do you want that? Then you have to go beyond these mundane things you have to give up something to get something. If you want to really enjoy a nice good meal, you have to give up eating junk food all day. Since the morning if you're stuffing yourself with potato chips, you can't enjoy your lunch because you won't have the appetite for it. If you're hungry, then you can enjoy a good meal. You don't have to give up the potato chips though. Moderation is the key.

Recognize duality to see unity

 

Some people misuse yoga for the fulfilment of their carnal instincts; this is wrong. It should be the other way around. Whenever there is a carnal instinct, it should be transformed into a divine inner experience. There is a beautiful word in Sanskrit called atma rati, union with one’s being, rejoicing in one's self. 

There are two things, prakriti (nature) and purusha (consciousness). There is an interplay of nature and consciousness all the time. The union of your body and soul — your body is female (prakriti), and your soul is male (purusha) — is happening all the time. And, seeing that union within oneself is samadhi. 

That is why samadhi is considered to be a thousand times more joyful than carnal desires. Whatever joy sex gives, samadhi offers a thousand times more because there is no effort and no action there. It is only being and just being. When just the being, the play and display of consciousness come to one’s awareness, it becomes one’s experience — exquisite and beautiful! 

Don’t keep any corner of your existence away from divinity. The divine should be interwoven into every aspect of your life, and this is called brahmacharya, which means moving with the infinity, uniting with the infinity. In India, you find both aspects — Shiva and Parvati who symbolize prakriti and purusha, consciousness and matter — everywhere. First recognize the duality and then see the unity. They are not two, they are not different but two sides of the same coin.

You are complete. You are both man and woman. Getting rid of this label, ‘I am man’, ‘I am woman’ — getting out of your limited identity, this is the highest philosophy of the universe. We keep identifying ourselves, ‘I am a man’, ‘I am a woman’, ‘I am old’, ‘I am young’, ‘I am educated’, and ‘I am illiterate’. Throw away all these labels. What remains is pure consciousness. Just know that you are the consciousness.

Don’t go around saying I am nothing. Adi Shankaracharya once said, ‘One who labels himself as something is a fool and one who labels himself as nothing is a bigger fool.’ One who is nothing does not talk, so just keep quiet. How can you say, ‘I am nothing’, when you are saying something! There cannot be somebody there saying, ‘I am nothing.’ 

When you consider the basic necessities of food and sex as sacred, then aggression in you disappears and surrender, gratefulness and love dawn in you. That is when the devotee and the divine have become one. They have blissfully merged into one. But there is a difference between bliss and sex. Sex is energy consuming and draining while bliss is energy conserving. All emotions that you experience are nothing but energy moving through you, through the chakras in the body.

Sex is not a sin

 

Sex is a manifestation of kama or desire. ‘Sex is the original sin,’ this is what people have been made to believe in the past. Sex is not a sin. It is the basis of all life on the planet. There are two basic instincts in human beings, and these have been with you in all your lifetimes — food and sex. These have been with you in all your lives, even when you were an animal and now as a human being. You are born out of food and sex. 

It is so beautiful that in India we connect both of these to divinity. In the Upanishads, it is said ‘Food is God.’ When you consider food as God, you will not overeat. You won’t simply stuff yourself with food, but you will eat with honour. No festival in India is celebrated without delicacies, associated with that festival, being prepared in every household. When you go to a temple, the first thing the priest gives you is some prasad. Prasad is just a little bit of food that is given to the devotees. Without prasad, there is no pilgrimage and no festival. Food and God are connected. 

Similarly, sex and God are also connected. One often tends to keep sex separate from God. Sex is often thought of as part of material life. But here in India, the ancient people linked sex to God so that no aspect in us, even an instinct as basic as sex, remained away from God. When you honour sex and consider it as part of the divinity, then your obsession disappears, lust disappears and sacredness dawns. Also, the basic instinct of lust transforms into love. This is the ancient thought. 

On Kundalini Shakti

Kundalini simply means the energy in your body. Unless it is awakened there is no life. And in the very first Sudarshan Kriya you do it is already awakened. It doesn’t have to be dramatic.


There are three types of kundalini shakti. One is sattvic. The most harmonious, gentle awakening of the kundalini shakti. And you don’t even know that it’s awakened, automatically you start being very happy, generous, large hearted, big minded, compassionate, intuitive. All these things keep happening spontaneously.


Second is the rajasic type where you find this jerk and all this drama happens. A lot of dramatic intense experiences come, this is the rajasic way. 

There is no tamasic way of developing kundalini. If at all some people consider tamasic, the people who use some powers and black magic and this and that sort of thing. But I don’t consider it as tamasic kundalini at all but it is some spirit powers you know. You appease some lower spirits and get some powers from them. And then you dance for some days and then you collapse, that’s what people do. So don’t run after some of this so called magic and miracles, many of them are from these lower spirits. They appear to be doing something to you and then you feel miserable later. 

So sattvic are the most harmonious, best type of kundalini and it is what happens already in Sudarshan Kriya. Doesn’t it happen? Tingling and every cell of the body wakes up. Does it happen or not?

Remember the very first Sudarshan Kriya you did, everything awakened?! That’s it! Did you have peaceful meditation? Did you start feeling I am not the body but I am the spirit? Did you get that experience? That’s already happening.


If you have no experience in kriya, you have so much dullness all the time, then you have to watch your food. You must be stuffing yourself with too much food, number one. Or you must have indulged in too much sex that there is no energy in your body to experience anything else. Then also it doesn’t happen. 

I tell you, someone has been very very busy day and night and didn’t have good sleep, enough rest then there is no way that they can experience any kundalini shakti. So these are some of the criterion, got it? When your energy is conserved then you find that elevation. And if good meditation is happening, you should know it is already functioning. If when meditating, inside you feel the expansion, a calmness, a serenity, it is all sign of kundalini shakti.

You are complete!

Bangalore, 13 December 2011


There are two basic instincts in human beings, one is food, the other is sex. These you have been doing in all the lifetimes, when you were an animal and now as a human being. You are born out of these two - food and sex.

It is so beautiful that in this country (India) they connected both these with Divinity. Food is connected with God. In the Upanishads, it is said ‘Food is God’. When you consider food as God you will not over eat. You don’t simply stuff food but you eat food with so much honour. No festival in India goes without food. And when you go to temple the first thing they give is some Prasad. Prasad is just a little bit of food that is given. Without Prasad there is no pilgrimage, no festival. Food is connected with God.

Similarly, sex is also connected with God. Otherwise you keep sex separate and think this is my material life and think of God as different. But here the ancient people, they linked that to God so that no aspect in you remains away from God. A basic instinct doesn’t remain away from God. That is why they put Radha Krishna and Shiva Parvathi. Shiv Ling is a symbol of that. So when you honour sex and consider it as part of Divinity, then your obsession disappears, lust disappears and sacredness dawns.

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