The concept of celibacy, often referred to as Brahmacharya in ancient traditions, holds a significant place in the pursuit of spiritual awakening. Brahmacharya is a divine word and the sum and substance of yoga. It is the supreme yoga, which Lord Krishna emphasizes repeatedly in the Bhagavad Gita. Down through the ages, the highest stress has been laid on brahmacharya or sexual abstinence in every religion.
This article delves into the profound connection between celibacy and spiritual growth, exploring its historical context, benefits, and relevance in contemporary life. It examines how abstaining from sexual activity can lead to purification, heightened senses, and a deeper connection to the divine.
The Power of Semen Retention | Sadhguru
Historical and Religious Perspectives on Celibacy
Throughout history, celibacy has been regarded as a path to spiritual enlightenment in various cultures and religions. The importance of brahmacharya was emphasized by our great Rishis.
- Ancient Traditions: Ancient India, Egypt, and Greece enforced the rule that the worshipper must abstain from intercourse during and before worship.
- Christianity: The highest type of Christian was a celibate. Christian teachers praised celibacy, and marriage came to be, in their eyes, only a secondary good for those who were unable to serve continence.
- Islam: In Islam, strict continence is required on the pilgrimage to Mecca.
- Jainism: The Jains force on their munis the rule to abstain from all sexual relations; not to discuss topics relating to women, not to contemplate the forms of women.
- Buddhism: The Buddhist Order of Mendicants was governed by the 227 rules of the Patimokha.
In Chapter Six, sloka fourteen, it is very clearly stated that the vow of brahmacharya is necessary for meditation: Brahmacharivrate Sthitah. In Chapter Seventeen, sloka fourteen, He says that brahmacharya is one of the requisites for the austerity of the body. Now, we have another statement made in Chapter Eight, sloka eleven, that yogis practice brahmacharya in order to attain the goal spoken of by the knowers of the Vedas. In the Raja Yoga of Patanjali Maharshi also, yama is the first step. Yama is the practice of ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya and aparigraha-non-killing, truthfulness, non-stealing, celibacy and non-receiving of gifts.
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Throughout folklore runs the idea that second-sight and the vision of the supernatural are especially, if not solely, the privilege of the celibates. Westermack favors the explanation that sexual pollution destroys holiness. Iambichus states that the gods do not hear him who invokes them if he is impure from sexual connections. It was required for the Hebrew congregation during the theophany at Sinai and before entering the temple.
Brahmacharya as the Foundation of Spiritual Life
Brahmacharya is a sine qua non of spiritual life. It is a great desideratum. It is of vital importance. Abstinence or continence is the corner-stone on which the pedestal of moksha stands. If the corner-stone is not very strong, the superstructure will fall down when there is heavy rain. Even so, if you are not established in brahmacharya, if your mind is agitated by evil thoughts, you will fall down. There is no hope for you to have Self-realization or Knowledge of the Self if you are not well established in brahmacharya.
Brahmacharya is the master-key to open the realms of eternal bliss. Brahmacharya is the very foundation of yoga. Just as a house that is built on a rotten foundation will surely fall down, so also, you will fall down from your meditation if you have laid no proper foundation, namely, the attainment of perfect brahmacharya. Brahmacharya is the basis for the attainment of kaya siddhi-physical perfection.
The Role of Semen and Ojas Shakti
Complete celibacy must be observed. This is of paramount importance. By the practice of yoga the semen becomes transmuted into ojas shakti. The yogi will have a perfect body. There will be charm and grace in his movements. He can live as long as he likes.
Lust as an Obstacle to Spiritual Growth
Lust deals a deadly blow to the spiritual calibre of man. It is not possible for you to enter the spiritual path that leads to union with God unless and until you control lust and become established in brahmacharya. As long as lust smells sweet in your nostrils, you cannot entertain sublime, divine thoughts in your mind. That man in whom the sex idea is deep-rooted can never dream of understanding Vedanta and realizing Brahman even within one billion births.
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Sexual indulgence is a great obstacle in the spiritual path. It bars spiritual practices definitely. The sexual urge must be controlled by entertaining sublime thoughts and regular meditation. There must be complete sublimation of the sexual energy. Then only is the aspirant absolutely safe.
Sex attraction, sexual thoughts and sexual urge are the three great obstacles in the path of God-realization. Even if the sexual urge vanishes, the sex attraction remains for a long time and troubles the aspirants. Sex attraction is very, very powerful. Sex attraction binds one to this world. Each cell in the body of a male or a female is surcharged with the sex element. The mind and the senses are filled with sex juice.
Man cannot remain without looking at a woman, without talking to her. He derives pleasure in the company of a woman. Woman also cannot remain without looking at a man, without talking to him. She derives pleasure in the company of a man. That is the reason why he or she finds it extremely difficult to annihilate the sex attraction. Sex attraction cannot be destroyed without the grace of the Lord.
The organ of sight does great mischief. Destroy the lustful look, the adultery of the eye. Try to see God in all faces. Again and again generate the currents of dispassion, discrimination and enquiry. Eventually you will be established in Brahman or the Eternal. Again and again generate sublime divine thoughts and increase your japa and meditation.
The Spiritual Path: An Inner Deepening
To understand this more deeply we need to first understand what the spiritual path is and what is spirituality anyway: it is an expansion through an inner deepening. So this is why yoga means union - and through its practice we are then naturally and eventually able to expand our awareness beyond the limitations of our skin. For example, as you then touch a table, it is no longer your fingers touching the table, the table is kind of a part of you - because our skin is essentially a kind of separation, which tells us “finger touches table and it is a table outside of me because I feel the border of it through having a border of my skin”.
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Yoga isn’t about physical exercises, it is not a social media page or selfies twisting your body; and actually the physical side of yoga isn’t a big deal, it doesn’t make you a yogi, it just helps certain people come into more flexibility to then be able to expand something within them and be more able to perceive the spiritual nature and purpose of it, which is union. Our five senses are actually very important, and through them we deepen in our inner experience, and as we then develop them and sharpen them into greater awareness we begin to open up our clair senses, which are essentially the developed five senses.
Attachments are not a bad thing, and we all have attachments though they differ in nature, intention and the energy through which we approach them. These are often most understood or easily explained through the three gunas: tamas, rajas and sattvic. We are all tamas when we sleep, rajas when we take a shower, so it isn’t about villainizing anything, for tamas too longs to be witnessed, observed and understood. Only then, we may be able to rise in our awareness level and move into a more sattvic way of life. Naturally, as you evolve spiritually there will be less attachments to your lower tamas and even rajas urges, because you will seek a deeper connection to people and things; as this is what your inner world will now be experiencing, and seeking to continue to experience with others and your connections.
Transmuting Lust into Love
Lust is a common attachment in our world, and that’s actually something we may witness in nature also, so it is a natural impulse for our human nature. But once our lust for physical attraction and base level desires end, i.e. That same natural force and power awakes within us a divine consciousness, because we shift the fires within us to transform ourselves from within, we become free of the lust and turn it into love and a sense of purity and liberation.
You become mesmerized by the divine beauty, you begin feeling it in your entirety. And then - you begin seeing the divine in every other human being also, so you feel mercy, you feel compassion, you feel for them within you and without you all and everything. Your heart expands you. When we transmute these inner fires, we find a new desire, a new fire, a new passion, a new attraction - for the divine and pure in nature. Lust then becomes transformed into love.
Naturally, you will not be satisfied nor even interested in pure physical pleasures of skin - because what you’ve awakened within you is something that longs for real deeper union with another. You now know how it feels, you now know how real desire and soul passion feels, so naturally you may become celibate in the way people understand celibacy.
Benefits of Celibacy
There are many benefits to celibacy, but I often hesitate to speak on this topic in a public article, because these are unique choices to each person and I don’t want people to force themselves to do something that doesn’t naturally come to them yet. Whether celibate for a few years or longer, there are various benefits and will deepen and speed up your spiritual growth, as well as sharpen many senses and raise your energy vibration. Celibacy naturally comes to people who are growing spiritually or are already walking the mystic’s path. It’s a natural instinct. It doesn’t feel like some sacrifice, it doesn’t feel hard to do so, you don’t feel emptiness or lack, it just feels natural.
There is an esoteric belief that being celibate and harnessing the sexual energy in this life builds a stronger heart and health for you in the next life and your etheric body; this is found in both Western and Eastern esoteric beliefs. Benefits of celibacy include purification, spiritual growth, expansion, energy rising and attuning to higher frequency, sharpening of intuitive and all senses, and better physical health also. On the other hand, people who have a lot of sexual partners or porn addictions have a lot of entanglements in their energy fields, which affects their health on various levels.
Learning to harness the sexual and creative energies is of great benefit to people, and it’s a big topic, multi layered and complex, but people should understand how energy works, and be quite mindful with whom they choose to connect to and merge with. Whom you engage yourself with will have influence on your path forward and on your own energy as well; so invest some time in learning about these topics.
Some people do stay celibate for some years and then if choose to settle down with someone they feel connected to emotionally and spiritually and physically, then they just come out of that - but it is love guided, not flesh guided. Other people enter into a marriage with God such as monks or yogis etc.
The western world has been really pre-occupied with sex, and in general no, it’s not serving them because there is constant mismatch of energy and energy being too entangled and for many it is drained, and I think all should learn about the spiritual nature of sexual interactions and what it actually does to their own energy body, so that they are more mindful. There is nothing shameful about sex, it is a celebration of love, but it is about knowing and respecting the sexual energy, so that you can choose more mindfully and experience more fulfillment in your own life.
It’s not “necessary”, but yes, for people who are actually devoted to their spiritual growth and evolution, this is the path; or for people who are studying spiritual or sacred text, it’s better to remain celibate for various reasons. Dharmic celibacy certainly advances your spiritual growth and has many benefits on your energy and etheric body, which later reflect on your physical body also.
We are not here to become spiritual, we already are spiritual beings; we are here to awaken that inner wisdom and apply it towards our human relationships. And our spiritual self or life isn’t just when we meditate, you don’t have to meditate at all actually, but our spiritual life extends to all areas of our life; it is when we do our most ordinary deeds during the day, through love and compassion, and of how we respond and interact with things different from us and our perspectives.
Our spiritual self isn’t just a sometimes or when it fits us, just like love isn’t just a sometimes or when it fits it or serves our self interests - it is an always. And the only genuinely spiritual people that I’ve ever met were people with warm hearts, with open generous feeling hearts while being able to hold love, hold one another and act of compassion and respects. Meditation doesn’t make you spiritual, posting spiritual memes doesn’t make you spiritual, being a vegan doesn’t make you spiritual, yoga doesn’t make you spiritual, celibacy doesn’t make you spiritual neither.
You can still of course lead a more spiritual path and life while being in love and sexually intimate with someone, you don’t have to become a monk if that’s not your calling; and intimate relationships can be truly beautiful and fulfilling, and marriage too wouldn’t stop you from pursuing your spiritual growth. Celibacy will speed up your spiritual growth process in significant ways but only if it comes naturally to you and it’s your conscious decision, and you are still doing your work with inner growth. Otherwise it’s suppression and that’s not helpful to you nor anyone around you.
While people think their sexuality is a conscious process, it isn’t - it is a compulsive process. And as such, it will serve as enslavement for you and become a limit, an impediment. If you can look within yourself, with honest reflection, and see what your compulsions are, regardless of their nature, whether it is emotional compulsions or thought patterns etc., then you will rise in some self awareness and naturally you will become more mindful of how you live your life and what choices you make for yourself. Once you understand the root of your compulsions, the compulsions themselves often go away - and you free yourself of what external holds you in its powers. If someone follows a spiritual path they will naturally evolve out of any compulsions and walk a life of more freedom within and without.
This is what leads to fulfillment because when we know ourselves, when we know what matters to us, and we are walking in truth, it enriched our experiences. Because that’s the thing with lust also: it is essentially seeking to fulfill a deeper need within you but if you are not aware of that need you will keep feeling unfulfilled because you are not actually addressing the real need and giving yourself what you really need. So what’s the deeper need behind lust? It’s love. It’s emotional connection. When you understand this, you may choose more wisely and transform your inner fires.
Sadhguru on Sexuality and Spirituality
Sadhguru: The whole dimension of spirituality is to grow beyond the physical, to taste something beyond the physical. If your involvement with the physical is very deep, naturally your attachment to the body is very strong. It is not sex per se which can be an impediment in one’s growth but one’s attachment to the body definitely is an impediment - there is no question about that. Generally, sexuality breeds that attachment. Celibacy has been talked about in that context.
But does the sexual act itself stop a person from pursuing his spiritual path? For a person who wants to go all out and do things in a short time, the advice is definitely to not get entangled with these bodily aspects because then you will get involved in many things. For many people, if they start out with any kind of physical involvement with something, emotions and thoughts follow and their whole life becomes just that - they cannot keep their focus on anything else. If a person is such that one department of his life is handled one way and it is totally absent when he sits for something else, then it is not so much of an impediment. But most people cannot deal with their lives like that. It just entangles them on all levels.
Whatever activity you do in your life has nothing to do with the spiritual process because the spiritual process is inward, activity is outward. Action is either of the body, mind, energies or emotion. All these things can be stepping stones for a spiritual process but they are not spiritual in any sense because all of them belong to the physical realm. Spirituality and activity have actually got nothing to do with each other if you know how to keep a clear distance between the two.
But that distance is not there in most people, so we say “do not get entangled in this, do not get entangled in that.” If you are absolutely conscious in every aspect of your life, nothing that you do in your life is an impediment. Though people would like to project their sexuality as a very conscious process, it is not so. It is a compulsive process. Maybe it is handled a little consciously by some people while others do it compulsively, but essentially, the basic ingredient and seed of sexuality is a compulsive process. It is physiological and chemical - it is a function of hormones which drives you in that direction.
Any kind of activity, whether it is eating, sexuality, talking or whatever, if it is a compulsive process - if you are enslaved to it - it is an impediment. If you look at what is causing this compulsiveness, if you understand that and handle that aspect, compulsiveness goes away. That means you are definitely moving towards freedom.
Quotes on Brahmacharya
Dadashri: The person who is under the vow of brahmacharya will never fall, no matter how bad the difficulties. Brahmacharya is the king of the body. A person practicing brahmacharya has a wonderful mind.
Dadashri: No. The vitality may dissipate. It does become useless in sex, does it not? That extract is a very different matter. Lord Mahavir had the extract of brahmacharya for forty-two years. Vitality is the ultimate extract of all the extracts from the food we eat. If this extract is properly preserved, one can quickly attain the Self. One will be protected from the pains of the world and all bodily ailments.
Dadashri: The Self will only be attained through the attainment of the extract of the living body, the non-Self. This is always the case in the traditional spiritual Kramic path. Without this there is no progress and one will have difficulty in remembering and saying simple sentences of scriptures.
Psychological and Spiritual Benefits of Celibacy
Celibacy can lead to several psychological and spiritual benefits:
- Purification: Abstaining from sexual activity can purify the mind and body.
- Spiritual Growth: Celibacy can accelerate spiritual growth by redirecting energy towards inner exploration.
- Expansion: It can lead to an expansion of consciousness and awareness.
- Energy Rising: Celibacy can help in raising energy levels and attuning to higher frequencies.
- Sharpening of Senses: It can sharpen intuitive and other senses.
- Better Physical Health: Celibacy can contribute to improved physical health.
The practice of brahmacharya is the most important qualification for the spiritual aspirant, no matter what his chosen path may be-Karma Yoga, Upasana, Raja Yoga, Hatha Yoga or Vedanta. The discipline of complete abstinence is demanded from all aspirants. Only a true brahmachari can cultivate bhakti. Only s true brahmachari can practice yoga. Only a true brahmachari can acquire jnana.
Conclusion
Celibacy, or Brahmacharya, is a powerful tool for spiritual growth and awakening. By understanding its historical significance, benefits, and practical application, individuals can make informed decisions about incorporating this practice into their lives. Whether pursued temporarily or as a lifelong commitment, celibacy can offer profound purification, heightened awareness, and a deeper connection to the divine.