6. SEXUAL ABSTINENCE OR BRAHMACHARYA
All movements are, in the mass movements of Nature's cosmic forces, they are movements of universal Nature. The individual receives something of them, a wave or pressure of some cosmic force, and is driven by it; he thinks it is his own, generated in himself separately, but it is not. so, it is part of a general movement which works just in the same way in others. Sex, for instance, is a movement of general Nature seeking for its play and it uses this or that one—a man vitally or physically "in love" as it is called, with a woman is simply repeating and satisfying the world-movement of sex;...
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The sex-energy itself is a great power with two components in its physical basis, one meant for procreation and the process necessary for it, the other for feeding the general energies of the body, mind and vital—also the spiritual energies of the body. The old yogis call these two components retas and ojas. The European scientists generally pooh-poohed the idea, but now they are beginning to discover the same fact for themselves.
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The sex-energy utilised by Nature for the purpose of reproduction is in its real nature a fundamental energy of life. It can be used not for the heightening but for a certain intensification of the vital-emotional life; it can be controlled and diverted from the sex-purpose and used for aesthetic and artistic or other creation and productiveness or preserved for heightening of the intellectual or other energies. Entirely controlled it can be turned into a force of spiritual energy also. This was well-known in ancient India and was described as the conversion of retas into ojas by brahmacharya. Sex-energy misused turns to disorder and disintegration of the life-energy and its powers.
The sex-impulse is certainly the greatest force in the vital plane; if it can be sublimated and turned upwards, ojas is : created which is a great help to the attainment of higher consciousness. But mere restraint is not sufficient.
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 of turns all the action of he consciousness towards wrong
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experience, turbid and delusive. One must, therefore, clear this is 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&madash;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
¹ Sri Aurobindo says, "The vital is the Life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul in man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts: anger, fear, greed, lust, etc. Mat belong to that field of the nature."
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from the sex-impulse, feels it as not its own, as something alien thrown on if by Nature-force to which it refuses assent or identification; each tirade 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 dream and no further movement comes from the outer Nature-force to rekindle 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 mast 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.