Sex: a matter of evolution of consciousness

Over a year ago, Swami Kriyananda established a renunciate order for a new age. He calls it the Nayaswami Order. In it, married couples pledged to celibacy and dedicated to spiritual ideals through meditation, devotion, and service can become Swamis. This is an astounding statement and example in the context of social mores.

What makes this article difficult is the twin facts that our culture celibrates (take the 'r' out and you have celibate!) sexuality as the pinnacle of pleasure, and that sexuality is necessarily very personal (and complex because involving two, not just one, person).

Nothing can be said about sexuality that can stand alone as a truth for everyone. Therefore anything I might write here must be seen in the larger context of at least the article as a whole and not any single sentence or statement.

There are certain aspects of human sexuality that are sources for and hints at the deeper reality that this powerful urge represents. One of these is the instinct to privacy in sexual matters. Indeed, in the dark and under the covers is typical. Why is this? Is this the legacy of past social conditioning or is it deeper? Why the instinct to cover up private parts, what we call "nakedness?" This is true even outside the context of sexual arousal or activity.

We accept, in other words, a general norm of "decency" but we don't necessarily understand its source in human consciousness. A few revolt against this or flaunt it and, although relative (like hemlines going up or down), it seems to persist in one form or another. Some cultures enforce a total cover-up of women while others have certain implicit and accepted guidelines that are context sensitive (a bikini worn on a beach is accepted but at the office is not).

Without the creative impulse humankind would eventually die out. Without the creative impulse, inventions, great art, new ventures and social services would not exist. The question in human consciousness has always been how to deal responsibly with the creative urge. The extremes of condemnation or suppression vs. promiscuity aren't worth commenting upon in an article on general spiritual principles.

Another aspect of human sexuality that invites deeper understanding is the simple and undeniable fact that its biological function is the continuation of the human species. Equally obvious is its pleasurable aspects, but then, too, so is the reality of boredom, disease, crime, suffering, shame, abuse, violence, and perversion. Indeed, one wonders if the pleasure of sex is more or less equally balanced by the suffering and degradation it can engender: not in any single individual, so much, as in the human race as a whole. A specultative question, admitedly and one without a definitive answer but interesting, nonetheless.

[A footnote to the sordid side of sex is a curious remark by Yogananda--hardly original, however--commenting that sex, devoid of fantasy and pleasure, and seen strictly speaking from the animal or procreative function is, well, off-putting, to say the least. Not unlike how young children vew their parents caught in the act of kissing: "disgusting!" While no one would seriously offer this view of sex as the recommended one in the face of the human experience, it is not without some validity. Why were the organs of such intense pleasure made to double as organs of elimination?]

Another aspect inviting deeper contemplation is the dynamic tension between sexuality as an expression of human love, caring and tenderness, and sexuality as a means for individual self-gratification. These two aspects of human sexuality compete against each other, too often dragging human sexuality into a neutral zone such that a couple with a great sex life can still end up divorcing one another. It's as if there's no connection between enjoyment of sex and the respect, compatibility, and friendship that is the real basis of marriage.

Paramhansa Yogananda interpreted the Adam and Eve story as a teaching that the impulse to procreate sexually was the single compelling cause for the "fall" of the human race. For as is taught in the Bible and in other similar stories around the world, we were originally created pure and God-realized. Yogananda taught that we were even created with the power to procreate through divine power without resorting to sexual means. Whether this is literal or metaphorical is unclear, for he also suggested a personal one for everyone.

For example, in everyone's life when a human being reaches puberty, a new power and responsibility emerges through the human body and often produces challenges and suffering for the fact of its misuse early in adulthood. In any case, however interpreted, we cannot deny the power of the creative urge and then need to channel it lest harm and suffering result.

Imagine if marriage partners viewed sex as strictly for procreative purposes. Ok, that's NOT imaginable. I agree, it's not. Imagine if marriage partners entered marriage with no prospect of having sexual relations. Ok, again, UNimaginable. I would, however, counsel marriage partners to contemplate both of these and see if their desire for marriage stands on its own in terms of friendship.

Yet, a decline in sexual interest and activity is, in fact, the general trend as the years of marriage progress. (Of course, infidelity, whether mental or physical, can serve as an outlet for unfulfilled sexual or romantic urgings. However, neither fantasy nor fact can bring any lasting happiness as millions can and do testify.) It’s as if nature herself ignites the flame of sexual desire when our bodies are young but then we, in our ego and by indulgence, keep it alive almost despite ourselves.

Few, if any, couples will sustain the high level of sexual activity as the years go by. “As absence doth make the heart grow fonder,” it doesn’t take a sage to experiment and realize that a balanced level of sexual activity is more sustainable than extremes; and, that extremes of passion engender a self-balancing degree of bickering, disrespect, moodiness and the need for separateness. Intense sexual activity cannot be sustained without encroaching upon the longer term success of a marriage partnership which requires calmness, dignity, respect, and mutual friendship. [Again: a general statement, only.]

Thus it is, generally, that the importance of sex to a couple’s relationship will tend to decline as other aspects of their friendship emerge and are strengthened. Indeed, if this doesn’t happen, it’s not unlike a person who only dates but never marries: at a certain point, he or she may seem stunted in their emotional maturity.

Yogis teach (and other traditional cultures) that celibacy or at least sexual self-control and moderation supports mental and physical health and vitality. Moodiness, loss of memory, inability to concentrate, and premature aging are considered the consequences of sustained over-indulgence in sex. Hmmm, don’t these symptoms sound like issues which exist and are widespread in our culture?

Maybe the instinct for privacy derives from the witnessing and transcendent wisdom of our higher nature while the impulse to experience sex itself derives from the past memory of incarnations of sexual procreation as we advanced through the lower life forms towards the human form. (Is it no coincidence that passionate embrace means self-forgetfulness? Is not the tendency to hide this activity perhaps not unlike Adam and Eve hiding from God, their conscience, after the deed was done?) While saints and masters who were married and had children demonstrate that one can be in the married state and still achieve liberation from all desires and attachments, it’s far more true that saints (aspiring to freedom) and masters (having achieved it) live or recommend the unmarried, celibate life, or at a minimum, a self-controlled moderate one.

Perhaps we should contemplate that a person of high ideals and spirituality might aspire to indulge less and less, and eventually not at all, in his or her sexual desires. I admit, yet another culturally unacceptable statement.

Western culture has contributed to the world at large the proof positive that fulfillment of sexual desires and fantasies are incapable of giving us lasting happiness. With traditional cultures we imagined that suppression and repression were the cause of unhappiness, but we, as a human race, must now admit, that neither does sexual indulgence. [This isn’t really news to the human race, but in past civilizations discovery of this truth was limited to a very small number of privileged people.]

It’s time, therefore, for the culture to take a step or two forward, towards a more balanced view of human sexuality. Paramhansa Yogananda made the bold statement that sex enjoyed for its own sake, as an end in itself, not merely a means (at least to human love, if not only procreation) is de facto adultery (even between married persons).

Accepting that almost no one would agree with such a statement today, the purpose of this article is to offer points of view that could expand our view of human sexuality such that in time, in our personal lives, and, culturally, in time, we might edge towards a more balanced form of human sexuality.

A form of “meditation” for married couples would be to re-direct sexual urges, fantasies and feelings, away from personal pleasure and towards the image of procreation as its purpose. (Nothing like images of diapers and howling babies to wilt sexual desire!)

In yoga there are techniques for drawing sexual energy up the spine towards the brain; for keeping busy in exercise, creative arts, serviceful activities, and devotion to high ideals and love for God, as natural means to transmuting procreative energy from its physical manifestation to a higher one.

The simple point of this exercise is to suggest that we face boldly the reality that sexuality cannot bring us happiness, and, conversely, that sexual transmutation and moderation can bring us greater happiness. This could engender a greater personal effort to consciously avoid the bombardment of images on television, in the movies, and internet that suggest the pleasure and happiness of sexual attractiveness and indulgence. It offers suggestions as to how to behave with members of the opposite sex, which in our culture, we accept that we mix freely but we do not have to "mix freely" in familiarity. Dignity, respect, and centeredness in our relations can elevate even the workplace to higher level of creativity, productivity and human satisfaction for a job well done through cooperation and teamwork.

The interaction of men and women from a higher level offers great hope and promise in humanity's tackling the challenges of this new age. As people struggle for freedom from racial prejudice, and from discrimination in the treatment of women generally, we have yet to consciously work towards outgrowing sexual stereotypes, attitudes, and behaviors that we might be more liberated towards our higher (genderless) nature. On this higher level, the differences between men and women can be elevated to a new level of co-creation. When working together as partners in the workplace or at home, and doing so with mutual respect, great things can be accomplished and greater happiness and satisfaction achieved.

At least, I offer this as a possibility and one that most people can experiement upon for themselves.

Blessings, Nayaswami Hriman

Infinite Christ: Part 2. Chanting is Half the Battle!

A hundred years ago women were fighting for the right to vote. Imagine that! It seems incomprehensible now to us, doesn’t it? A hundred years ago a person, village or nation of another race, language, culture or religion were suspect and even proper objects for destruction and theft.


In our recent Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi Tribute, we revisited the fact that it was only fifty years ago a black person couldn’t eat in the same restaurant, use the same public restrooms, or public transportation waiting rooms or seats as whites.

Today fanatics blow themselves up and innocent bystanders in the name of God, expecting thereby to earn entry to the pearly gates.

So it is no surprise that some followers, perhaps most followers of Jesus Christ and self-appointed representatives of his teachings, proclaim Jesus Christ the greatest, indeed, the only son of God!

[By the way: the placement of Jesus’ picture here on the altar at the Ananda Meditation Temple (in the middle and slightly above the others) does not signify a stature greater than any other. It’s artistic…..in fact, really, it’s the ladies who do the flowers who insist upon it!  ]

In this week’s Sunday Service reading, the metaphor which Paramhansa Yogananda gives is that of the wave and the sea. No mere wave can claim to BE THE SEA. Jesus may have realized his Oneness with the Father but he himself never claimed to BE THE FATHER, as a result, thereby. He made constant reference to his doing the will of the Father in a variety of circumstances, including his healings of others. He promised to send the HOLY SPIRIT. Jesus consistently deferred and referred to a reality far greater than himself.

He promised his disciples that they would do the same things as he, greater things than this, he said. St. John in the same first chapter of his gospel (quoted in the reading) said, as we so often quote here at Ananda in accordance with Yogananda’s teachings, “That as many as received Him to them gave He the power to become the sons of God!”

In today’s quotation from the bible St. John says the “world was made by him.” So, I ask you, did Jesus Christ, the man, live in a human body BEFORE the world was created? Absurd. Elsewhere he said, “Before Abraham WAS, I AM.”

The divinity of Jesus, therefore, belongs to the ages. It supercedes its own appearance in the human being known as Jesus. To be “only begotten” (a phrase Jesus himself never used, according to the New Testament), refers to this overarching divinity which Yogananda and others call, variously, the Universal Christ Consciousness. This refers, inter alia, to the underlying divine consciousness that not only created the world (in the beginning) but lies immanent, or inherent, latent, at the heart of every atom of creation.

It is the “son” because, in terms of the Trinity, this only begotten divinity is the offspring of the Father which “is in heaven” – meaning which is “above” and transcendent of creation, untouched by creation. Just as a playwright can write the story, the hero and the villain, the buffoon, and himself be none of them, as they are but a creation of his mind, so too God the Father Transcendent, the Infinite Spirit, perfect Bliss, remains untouched.

He leaves unto the other two aspects of Himself, the Trinity, the work of creation: the Mother (a Virgin, pure and untouched by the creation which she manifests) does the housework through the holy, divine vibration (the “Word”) which underlies all differentiated manifestations; and the only-begotten son of the Father, the Christ Intelligence, hidden and unseen in the womb or center of every atom of creation gives the intelligence and the impulse (and in humans, the free will) to carry on the work of creation from within.

All great prophets come and express universal truths, clothed in the language and the metaphor of their times and their people, addressing their particular needs at a particular time. Each represents a ray of the divine and universal truth and none, like the wave, can claim to be the “final” Word.

It is the mother, this vibration to which I would like to turn today. We have here this weekend David Eby. David, a professional cellist, has dedicated his life to exploring and sharing the music of Ananda, written by our founder, Swami Kriyananda. He guides the musicians and singers of Ananda Village and elsewhere in their technique and attunement.

Music has the power to change consciousness for the fact of its vibratory power. Music is its own language and is a universal language. It uses the tools of melody, harmony, and rhythm, but its seed language is consciousness and the vibration of consciousness.

I was saying to David that when I was a teenager and listening to rock and roll, e.g. the Beatles, I usually couldn’t understand the words owing to the noise of the music. In many songs, in fact, the words are only carriers, hosts as it were, to the underlying message. I love you, yeah, yeah yeah! Gadzooks….. and yet, we may laugh, but isn’t that the basic theme of most of the world’s folk and popular music? Is not love what makes the world turn ‘round? Human or divine, debased or platonic……

Music is far more important to the upliftment (or the degradation) of consciousness than we, with our proud intellects and insistence in being guided solely by reason, are able to admit.

We can turn that to our obvious advantage. For Paramhansa Yogananda taught that “Chanting is half the battle!” A yoga pose can change our state of mind or our mood; meditation can help us transcend anxiety and fear; so, too, can chanting (aloud or mental) can raise our consciousness.

Few can practice yoga or meditation more than a small percentage of our waking hours. But everyone can at least mentally chant “half the time!” Think of it! Half the battle!

This goes also for the music of Ananda. Chanting, defined narrowly, is not always enough. Our minds crave variety (how many old Beatles songs “pop” into my head?). Our minds like to chew on the words of music and understand them. We want to dwell on their meaning, extract their practical advice, and be moved by their inspiration.

“Brave were the people” “Walk like a man” “Father, now that I wander with Thee” what wonderful melodies and meaning we have been given. “Still your mind if you want to pray” as we sing to the Egyptian goddess, Isis (as a form of Divine Mother)!

If you struggle with finding the time, overcoming the resistance, or going deep into meditation, don’t give up but add to your efforts chanting, for it is half the battle! Ananda has a collection of CD’s (also at East West Bookshop) for your IPOD, MP3 player, car, or home! Don’t wait. Soon you’ll be halfway there.

Aum, aum, aummmm.......

Jesus Christ and the Infinite Christ

Before considering the nature of a Jesus Christ in his human form, let’s consider the nature of a Jesus Christ in his divinity. In the gospel of St. John, Chapter One, John writes, of Jesus: "That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not."

In this chapter — the most cosmic or metaphysical of all the gospels — St. John does not even use Jesus’ name, although the context (contrasting with John the Baptist and the Baptist’s role vis-à-vis Jesus), makes it clear that the words are referring to Jesus.

How could it be that Jesus Christ made the world? This would mean that Jesus existed before the world was created? Surely he would not have existed then as a human: with a human body and personality? Jesus was not declaring, “Hey, dude, I’m, like, THE MAN who created all this!”What an absurdity.

When Jesus made declarations in the first person, such as, “I an the way, the life and the light. No man comes to God except through me” (a paraphrase on my part), he was not making an egoic claim. True, some of his followers have interpreted these words in sectarian terms and have used them to justify putting down the founders and gurus of other faiths.

Even for the “blasphemy” for which he was crucified (“I and my Father are One”), it is clear in Jesus’ own words that he spoke in reference to his divine and overarching nature, not his human personality and body which had been named Jesus.

Just as a wave of the ocean cannot claim to “be the sea,” so, too, no human being can claim to BE GOD. One might affirm (or indeed speak from the realization of a Jesus Christ) that one is a child of God but cannot claim to be God Himself. Waves of the sea partake in the sea but cannot limit or define the sea itself.

Jesus referred frequently to the Father as the source of his inspiration and guidance to do and say what he taught and did. Near the end of his brief ministry, he also spoke of sending the Holy Spirit. So even in this, one can see that Jesus saw his divine nature as part of a greater, Infinite consciousness. He was in no way limiting God to himself. (And therefore he could not have limited God to appearing only in the body and personality of Jesus Christ, born in a tiny mud ball of a planet at one miniscule point in time, place, and history!)

Divinity appears in human form as a conscious, or Self-realized, manifestation of the same divinity which lies at the heart of all creation and which is our own true, if higher, Self. God appears in the form of his saints and saviors (meaning fully realized souls, or avatars) to give the promise of our own immortality and to help awaken souls to our divine destiny to also become one with the Father.

As St. John declares in that same first chapter: “As many as received Him, gave He the power to become the sons of God.” How much clearer can it get?

The stages of enlightenment are found by retracing our steps-not backwards in time or form (like having to go back to being monkeys or amoebas)-but upwards through the spiral staircase of the inner, astral spine to heaven (cosmic consciousness).

First we are awakened to the existence of divinity in human form. “Whom do men say I AM?” Then, through the magnetic exchange of a divine level of consciousness through the vehicle of the guru’s human persona (not merely while incarnate but afterwards as well, through disciples, teachings, stories and ultimately through inner attunement: "at-One-ment").

As this divine consciousness grows within us from the seed of its birth in the human heart, we begin to feel and perceive its subtle, vibratory manifestation in all creation (known as the “Word,” or the “Aum”).

Past this we begin to perceive the silent, still Presence or Witness centered at the heart of the primal, creative vibration. This is the “only begotten” consciousness of the Father that can be found IN creation. This is known as the Universal Christ Consciousness (or Intelligence) which in Sanskrit is the Kutastha Chaitanya.

Only by re-uniting with these two manifestations of the Holy Trinity can we finally ascend to the third (and seed consciousness) that lies beyond all vibratory spheres: the Father, or, the Infinite Spirit whose nature is pure Bliss. This nature, which is our own nature and the nature of all things in creation, is described as Ever-Existing, Ever-Conscious, Ever-New Bliss (or Satchidanandam).

Thus, our spiritual journey should begin with an openness to God’s presence in his saints and the masters. We should, as Krishna counsels in the Bhagavad Gita, learn at the feet of such teachers the truth teachings of wisdom and right action. We should learn the art and science of meditation that we not limit our journey to the intellect, or even to good words alone.

We should strive to commune inwardly with that Divine Presence that is, as Jesus taught in answering the question, “Where is the kingdom of heaven,” “within you.” Without concern for time and progress, we should strive to fulfill the two great commandments which can make us free: Love the Lord Thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. And love thy neighbor AS thy Self.

Blessings to you,   Nayaswami Hriman