Approaching Sex in a Religious Way

Given that sexual desire periodically arises in Isvara, Shiva, and saintly men and women the regenerate people learn to apply and use sexual energy in a religious way. The person with spiritual knowledge will use sex -- the most sacred thing on earth beside God tokens and duty -- in a religious manner.

The first religious use of sex is to channel it towards a holistic result, which is marriage, procreation, then various forms of spiritual sublimation. This means that sex is directed into the channels of courtship, marriage, childbirth and family creation which is Nature's purpose for sex. In the same way that a farmer keeps his irrigation in good repair, fixing leaks and making sure the water reaches the plants, a regenerate culture will create social systems in which sexual energy reaches its holistic goal and produces it's natural fruit. This is the first religious use of sex.

The second religious use of sex is to think of God before, during, and after -- offering up all its pleasure to the Lord in the same way the White Europeans have done with food and the pleasure of food. Thus in sex, the religious and regenerate person will connect it all to God, in mind, and not have it all to him or herself. That very sexual impulse is of the Lord, belongs to Him, and creates His profligate cosmos. In marriage this mindfulness brings sacredness to sex and greatly mitigates the damage it otherwise effects in the exterior world-dream. So, a spiritual couple (a religious couple) will think of God before, during, and after sexual experience just as they will think of God before, during, and after enjoying food. This is an aspect of Dharma that has been missing from religious teachings, including Christianity and all the other religious cultures. Restoring it will raise up the people.

The third religious use of sex is by containing it and sublimating it towards energy, accomplishment, family and personal prosperity, and then finally worship, meditation, and samadhi itself. A contained energy has the most power. The sexual energy within man and woman is part of what creates vision and outward manifestations of beauty in the world, just as the sap in trees is what creates flowers and fruit that seen externally. The sexual energy is like the winds that raise up visions before the mind. Thus it gives prayer greater power, and God-worship greater power. In the third religious use of sex, a husband and wife's sexual energy (or that of the single person) is directed Godward, and all the best visualizations of the mind, floated and wafted on those winds, are also offered to God in bhakti and bliss-prayer. The sublimated sexual energy is used to form vision and lift of vision and prayer to God.

  Realms Of Religious Knowledge, Cont.

Meditation

Meditation is seeking to know the transcendental God. As meditation ripens, one comes to know God as both Saguna and Nirguna Brahman. The first knowledge of God, coming through meditation, is God's bliss. Then upon coming to know God, one develops real love for God and fulfills the "greatest law" spoken by Jesus. One can only love something that one knows. Thus meditation, in various forms, is the central path of Christianity and also the yoga of the Upanishads.

When Christians sing a religious song in church and feel joy in it, or delight, or rapture, or a lift of spirits -- this is in fact meditation and bhakti-yoga. Other forms of meditation are more disciplined yet that devotional singing is one of the highest kinds of meditation, should you give yourself to it.
The fertile field: If one has been developing faith since childhood, he is already on a firmer footing for meditation. A sense of expectancy and anticipation of greater good is highly conducive to meditation fruit. One purpose of conventional religion and church is to develop the faculty for faith so that aspirants may have the highest inner experience of God, later in meditation.

Also, if one has cultivated even a little attitude of devotion for God, whether in the form of a name, an historical personage, a guru past or present -- he/she is also in the best posture to begin meditation. The light and emotion of the inner God is emotional and devotional. When something becomes wet, it bonds easily with wetness. Water merges easily with water. When one is emotional and devotional toward God, he and she contact God easily.

Then meditation is the master key to the religious knowledge that is bliss, protection, and influence. It gradually gives all knowledge, all resolutions, all protection, and all powers.

Meditation is touched briefly here. It will be explained more in the later section on Yoga/Austerities, as part of commentaries on the Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali.

Bliss

Bliss often dawns already with simple faith. It may have already dawned in childhood kneeling in church and doing the Christian devotional mudra, the anjoli mudra. It will have been felt in currents whenever feeling the attitude of devotion for God. But bliss increases by commencing meditation. This is bliss from the inner God, not based on any outer causes or conditions. Getting humans back into contact with their own innate soul-bliss is the purpose of religion, including Christian religion. 

Bliss is the fifth level of religious knowledge, but can dawn early and at any time for the religious (spiritual) person.

Austerities

Austerities are a spiritual technique for God-knowledge. The austerities imperative is found in Vedanta, Yoga, Christianity, and also the mysticism of indigenous peoples all over the globe.

Austerities are a sure method by which we can hammer out the difference between sense perception and divine perception. Austerities break the addiction and distraction of the sense and sense perception, thus allowing us to get a handle on the subtle Ineffable within. The yogis of India and the Christians, alike, practiced austerities for divine perception. Austerities are specified explicitly in the Vedic and Yogic scriptures.

Jesus Christ was clearly a practitioner of austerities that at least included fasting and solitude, and quite likely a practitioner of others, including meditation. His "eye be single" statement regards the meditation technique of the yoni mudra. Meditation itself is an austerity and the king of austerities because in meditation mind itself, the very enjoyer of sense perceptions, in renounced. In austerities we disengage with a lesser thing so that we can perceive a higher and better thing. We disengage with the gross to register the subtle; disengage with the dualistic to perceive the non-dual, and disengage with the tamasic to perceive the satvic. We also disengage with the creation to perceive the Creator, with austerities.

The Upanishads and scriptures such as Sankara's Quintessence of Vedanta are laden with specifications to practice austerities. The Yoga-Sutra states that the very first "action of yoga" is austerities. This is not because austerities are "preliminary" in yoga, but rather, they are of first importance. The Sanskrit word for austerities is tapas which refers to burning. In austerities we burn away sense attachment and burn away karma and impurities, stored in the body, that stand between us and divine knowledge. The following is the first verse in the chapter of the Yoga-Sutra that deals with the practice of yoga, by an Indian acharya:

The same verse translated by the Englishman Trevor Leggett:

"Devotion to the Lord" is the most common way that Isvara-Pranidhana is translated. Thus devotion to the Lord is indeed the second basic yogic activity.

The entire Yoga-Sutra, in practical terms, deals with meditation, the techniques of meditation, and the results of meditation on the Lord. This is because the goal of yoga -- interaction with and union with the Lord -- requires meditation. Moreover, because meditation is the most effective of all austerities. Thus the main subject matter of the Yoga-Sutra is meditation.
Yoga is actually a religion and the essence of religion, and is an address to the mind, not the body. Jesus Christ was a yogi and had mastered yoga. (Thus it is that an entire chapter of the Yoga-Sutra is devoted to miracles or esoteric powers like those performed by Jesus Christ.) The mind is the source of the body; the body is not the source of the mind. Thus mastery of the mind gives mastery of the body.

Now, understanding of the term "yoga" has been distorted and dumbed-down in the west recently.There is only one verse in the Yoga-Sutra that concerns the body per se, and that instructs that the spine should be erect and settled when practicing yoga (meditation). Some ancient Indian commentators use that verse to comment that a yogic posture is "mastered" when it can be held perfectly for three hours. To do this is very difficult, and it is in fact a very painful austerity. Out of Buddha's attempt to do that came his vipassana technique of meditation which purifies.

Body postures are a sub-specialty of yoga that developed as the result of shaktipat (baptism). Second, yogic postures are themselves intended as an austerity.This is natural to understand considering that austerity itself is a central yogic technique and indeed the first and basic technique. Thirdly, the postures were intended as a technique for enhancing meditation, including sitting for long sits. Tellingly, the yogic postures arise spontaneously in religious people who practice chastity, chanting or meditation, with an attitude of bhakti towards the sat-guru or the Lord (Isvara pranidhana). These spontaneously bodily asanas and mudras were in fact where the yogic postures were first found out! It is the Lord descending and dancing in the devotee. In yoga these are called yogic kriyas. In Christianity these are called variously such as "gifts of the spirit."

Both yoga and Christian culture have valued austerities. Because Christianity actually came from the Aryan Vedanta and Yoga, this is natural. Christian monastics have long practiced the austerities of celibacy (brahmacharya) solitude, chanting-meditation (prayer repetition or japa), fasting, and detached service (karma-yoga). In other words, yogic austerities of the genuine yoga have long permeated Christian monastic culture for 20 centuries, trickling down to the people, also, as ideals such as the Good Friday token fast and the all-important chastity ideals for the laity which created social order, strong families, a birthrate, and prosperity.

Christians have long practiced svadhyaya in their churches services in the form of religious singing. (Bhajans) This is a joyful kind of "austerity." It both concentrates the mind and stimulates feelings of bhakti. (Religious devotion.) But this will be discussed elsewhere.

Austerities for White Europeans who wish to enter the divine life should be:
-- Effort at chastity
-- Solitary times
-- Fasting at least one Sunday a month, then increasing to 3-day fasts
-- Out-loud repetition of prayer or sacred words (svadhyaya, mantra)
-- Quiet repetition of same (japa)
-- Times of silence, especially Sundays.

Every one of these six above have been a part of the Vedic and yogic culture of Sankaracharya, plus the European Christian monastic culture as well.

In summary: Austerities are central to both yoga and the European Christian tradition. Love your spiritual and religious heritage.

Siddhis