The celibate yogic master Yogananda, my initiating guru.














 


celibacy.info

What continence is like
COPYRIGHT 2010 JULIAN LEE

Religion without continence is like a wife without love, a flashlight without batteries, a worker without food. Moral continence and religion/spirituality are like this:

A widowed mother wanted to keep her children warm in a cold winter. Always her wise husband had made the fires. She had devotion, so she lit a spark at the hearth, and lit a spark again. She threw match after match into the fireplace. Nothing happened; she remained cold. Then a brother of our Brotherhood happened by. He said, "Look, ma, you have no wood in there." He carefully piled wood in her fireplace. Now she easily created a blazing fire and warmed and fed her own.

Religion without continence is cold, and dead. Religion, meditation, and spiritual practices with continence give light and comforting warmth, and the ability to benefit others.

Or chastity is like this:

Some people had brought a wonderful machine. It could do  many things and give many benefits.  (Religion can benefit society in so many ways.) Oh, what excitement they felt as they began to try it. But they couldn't get it to work. They put the parts together right, nothing happened. They pressed a switch, nothing happened. The lights and meters remained dark. They moved a lever, no effect. They pressed more buttons and switches, no result. They hopefully moved their prized machine to different locations around the room. Nothing changed. In walked a yogi of our Brotherhood. He saw their trouble and informed them: "You haven't plugged it in." He connected their machine to power. Now the machine lit up, served, satisfied, and provided many benefits. Religion without continence has no fruit. Spiritual austerities and yoga with continence has much fruit and benefits all of life.

And celibacy is like this:

A young man went fishing. He sat for hours without any nibble or bite on his line. He was disheartened. A yogi of our Brotherhood approached and said to him: "Let me see your line." The young man reeled it in. The Brother pointed to the end of his line and said, "Look, this is just an empty string. You have to put a hook on your line. That's your continence. Put this hook on your line and you can hold things -- even the Biggest things. On your hook of continence, also, place the irresistible bait of devotion." The young man soon had buckets of plump trout -- spiritual knowledge and food for his people.

And the moral law is like this:

A young man went looking for lost friends on a very dark night using his father's lantern. He lit the wick but it wouldn't stay alight. He remained in deep dark and could see no path. A Brother from our lineage found him there and said, "Look, your father kept oil in that lantern. That's how it gave out light." The Brother showed him how to fill his lantern. Now the wick stayed lit and burned very bright. He found the path easily and found his friends, and all rejoiced.

Or the moral rule is like this:

A man wanted to know the mysteries of religion and the secrets of the universe. He read scriptures and texts. He read book after book. But it disturbed him. His confusion and perplexity grew, and his life received little benefit from his  study. Then along came a yogi from our Brotherhood and said: "Look, son you are reading those books with no mind. Thus you cannot comprehend much of this. Become continent, then you'll have a mind. Cease from hemorrhaging your life force (and stop offending and alienating the Deity also) and you'll get a real mind. Then having a mind, you will easily penetrate all these texts." The young man began to practice continence and moral self-mastery. Soon he penetrated and comprehended all those texts. Now he got from them inspiration, insight, bliss, and divine experience and his faith grew stronger, ascending on solid stairs. He even brought forth from them fresh insights, discoveries, and new gems that delighted the world. Because he now had realization and the shakti was in him, it came to be that whatever he happened to say became like a living scripture to others. He himself became the source of new living scripture that guided and fed many anew.

And the moral dharma is like this:

Once a man fell in love with woman after woman, but they all left him. Soon he was left with family wreckage strewn across the countryside. A Brother of our lineage found him and said:

"Listen, stop worshiping women. Once you worship a woman, she must leave you. Nature requires it. Stop becoming her sexual thrall. Once you worship the sex thrills she gives you, she has to despise you. Worship her with just 10 percent of your being, and give the rest to God, and she'll stay with you, always trying to get the other 90 percent. And serve her and your children with your enlarged energies, she'll respect you and your children will be happy. Put God first, before her, and she will follow you. And with the 10 percent worship you gave her (with your life force in sex, plus affection), you can easily create a tremendous big family. Stay close to our brotherhood as you lift your wife and family to glory, we will keep you from making your wife into a god, which obligates her to leave you."

Moral purity is so significant it's like this:

A man had a company of a thousand workers. He wanted to be the best, build an empire, and show greatness to the world. But his workers were always in chaos. They were unproductive. His fortunes decreased each month, and his competitors overtook him as though he and his company was a joke. A Brother of our lineage walked into his private suites and said: "You want success? You are a little ridiculous. You don't even feed your workers, and you don't pay them. Feed your workers and pay them; they'll do anything for you. Then you'll easily overtake your competition. Your empire will be unassailable." That is, a man's chastity is what energizes all his assets and agencies, and draws beneficial forces to him. A man seeking life's Great Answers without chastity is like a king who never pays or feeds his warriors. A man wanting yogic development or samadhi without celibacy is like an executive who never feeds or pays his workers. Religious aspiration and questing, and yogic development, without chastity is a sure fail, it is a sure fail, and it is a sure fail. Spiritual and religious striving with chastity is a sure win. A man will get profound knowledge then even when he has no spiritual/religious interests. But for the spiritual and religious seeker, moral self-control is absolutely essential, like light and water is to plants.
 
The moral chastity of the male (and the female, too, in her own special female way) is exactly this significant in the development of spiritual knowledge (the development of religion and spiritual knowledge go together.) Nothing has been exaggerated. In fact, these similes and allegories understate the case.

The first thing that is covered up, dissimulated, and ratcheted down in religious texts is the original teachings about moral continence. Every egoistic current of mankind, every blighting desire, and every mischievous ruse of mankind descends immediately on religion's continence teachings, seeking to cover them up. This has occurred from Christianity to Buddhism to Yoga.* This is the first and biggest reason these  religions become weak and discredited, lacking saints, corrupted, and unable to be a bliss and prosperity key for man. Religionists then become like false operators on a hot, dusty summer day who invite their town to swim in their swimming pool, but there is no water in it. Because of the constant obscuration of the religious morality teachings, religion fails. Then mankind falls into savage ignorance. We are in the time of savage ignorance now. Only the resuscitation of religion's moral content can save mankind from further decline. And only this can give life to yoga in the West, give samadhi, and bring yogic and Christian saints to the West.
* In Christianity an understanding of the significance of morality is still implicit, but no longer consciously understood and fading fast. The celibacy of the Catholic priesthood long provided a clue to the significance of chastity, and the use of sex for procreation was understood as a secondary acceptable level of righteous living. The Catholic priesthood basically institutionalized the requirement for yogis called brahmacharya in India. Then with the breakup of the Catholic Church, the Protestant branches continued to have an implicit understanding firmed up by  centuries of morality under the Catholic Church. But these churches became gradually less morally clear. It is largely the still-extant implicit moral understanding of Christianity that keeps Christianity in the sights of Zionist/N.W.O. interests for continual attack. That moral understanding, even implicit, is the last hope of any social or cultural order in the people.

In Buddhism, the level of obscuration depends on which branch of Buddhism is cited. In the more traditional Buddhism, Theraveda, the significance of chastity is more explicitly understood. We seldom see Theraveda Buddhism promoted in the west. In "mahayana" Buddhism (Zen, etc.) less so. And in Tibetan Buddhism (Vajrayana, that of the Dalai Lama, the type of Buddhism heavily featured  in western media)  the morality quotient is nearly completely obscured. Many western "Tibetan Buddhist" aficionados have little to no concept of the importance of chastity notwithstanding the celibacy requirement of Tibetan monks. They are even likely to indulge themselves with the obscure Tibetan idea of "sex as holy rite." The Dalai Lama has never been forthright or aggressive about criticizing the moral decline of the west, or even representing Vajrayana's moral requirements to seekers of Buddhism. It seems that rakes and libertines thus flock to Tibetan Buddhism. Culture-destroyers of White nations have long promoted heterogeneous religions among Gentiles as a way to challenge the authority of Christianity and create cultural confusion. It seems clear why Tibetan Buddhism has been selected for positive portrayal in mass-media. Despite it's actual patriarchal traditionalist culture and it's actual strict moral rules, these are never mentioned or criticized in mass media. It is promoted in western media because it serves to dilutes the influence of the Christian churches among the seeking young, and because the Dalai Lama is bringing it over here divested of moral rigor and content.

In Yoga, the significance of morality remains far more clear as  presented in the actual texts such as the Bhagavad-Gita and the Yoga-Sutra. However, authors -- especially westerners -- steadily work to cover and confuse this matter in the way they translate the texts, either obscuring, dissimulating, or removing requirements of  sexual morality. This can be seen most often in the translation of "brahmacharya" into "self-control" rather than "celibacy." This, though brahmacharya is the only available Sanskrit term for celibacy and is the technical term for celibacy. These authors opine that it means a vague "self-control" and that "one must be self-controlled in every way." It makes the effort at chastity seem no different than, say, holding your temper at all times or enjoying rich food. The dissimulation effectively relieves western students from any chastity challenge. These apologists for chastity overlook the fact that sexual discharge is, for the male, the most egregious and significant possible lapse in self-control! The most popular English translation of the Yoga-Vasistha inserts the vague "self-control" wherever brahmacharya occurs. A western aspirant can read these 'censored' texts long and hard without ever thinking there is significance in sexual continence. Yet continence is essential to comprehend these difficult texts. It is likely that much of the rationale for these dissimulations is the idea that the morality facts are offensive to female readers and feminism. In general all western advocates who present Hinduism/Yoga to the masses, such as those with mainstream published books, ignore or filter out, or dissimulate the moral content of yoga. If you learn from them, you'll not hear about it. You have to go to the original texts. However, the value is still plainly present in the Hindu texts. Thank God for India. It is part of the work and goal of our brotherhood to be a spoiler in this process and teach a Hinduism/yoga with the moral content firmly and clearly presented.
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The celibate yogic master Shivanada, Lion of brahmacharya. guru, author of "Practice of Brahmacharya."