The Significance of Chastity in Yoga and Christian Spiritual Development

C hastity is highly significant in genuine yoga, in Vedanta, in dharma, and in Christianity. For the higher paths in these faiths -- the paths of the priests and the yogis -- chastity is critical. The impact of continence on the male is of a completely different order than the impact of, say "moderate eating" or "keeping your temper." Lots of fellows try not to overeat, go on diets, and go to the gym. Lots of worldlings try to keep their temper and try to be nice to everybody. It does not give them samadhi or meditation power.



The effects of continence, however, revolutionize a man's mind, body, and meditation life. It specifically bestows on his mind power of concentration and penetration. It makes both his body and mind occultly strong to cope with divine perception itself. Not of least significance, staunching of the male period (hemorrhage of highest blood) attenuates and calms the outer world-disturbance which is self-generated and which distracts a man and prevents him from spiritual focus. The exterior world-disturbance is directly based on the sexual discharge itself. (The world is a projection of your body, continent men learn this.)



As a man tears up his inner ground, he sees the external world continually torn up, including ever-growing personal dramas and life-damage. So continence is the stable platform for both spiritual progress and ordinary worldly progress (with wife, children, etc. The sacrifice of his blood and personal loss is legitimized by procreation and fatherhood. But sex-addicts and incontinent fathers will not be good husbands or fathers, and he will continue manifesting personal hell for himself and his family. This is both yogic and Christian knowledge.)



Finally, chastity pleases and attracts God. It finally makes him a "something" so that he can interact with, resist, and withstand that other Something, God. Other forms of self-control -- like what you eat or what you say -- do not achieve what chastity achieves. They do not give him what chastity gives him. They do not produce the personal inner result that chastity produces in a man. (Notice how in the following verses of the Upanishads chastity is singled out from austerities-in-general.) Chastity is in a different league from other forms of self-control; nothing affects more directly, more personally, or more profoundly. Some apologists may say "brahmacharya means" "love of Brahman" or "mergence in Brahman." But these two are impossible without chastity, thus the importance of brahmacharya.



Chastity is the basis of religion, the basis of yoga (mental control for God-mergence), and the basis of all quests for enlightenment in every world religion from Sikhism to Buddhism to Christianity to Vedanta. It was the chastity of the priests, nuns, and Christians that made Europe prosper. God always protects and prospers even a moderately moral nation, how much more one with nuns, priests, and chaste yogis (bhaktas). A thousand world-saving religions can be generated from a few chaste, God-seeking men and any satguru. (And God has given many to the world.) But without chastity of two types, among the faithful, even magnificient religions like Christianity will weaken, fall part, and die.

Chastity In the Upanishads



In ancient India a young man in the "brahmachari" period of youth had to have been striving for chastity before he could be sent to a guru for spiritual instruction. The reason the period of youth was called the "brahmachari" period is because getting sexual self-control is the overwhelming challenge of youth for the male. It is the effort most necessary and the critical accomplishment for a young male who would strive for the highest. Attainment of self-control is the obvious challenge and imperative of male youth.



In the opening verse of the Prasna Upanishad, six noble sons 'of noble families' approach a guru for instruction in spiritual knowledge. It says:



"All these, devoted to Brahman and firm in Brahman and seeking the Supreme Brahman,

approached, fuel in hand, the venerable Pippalada." (The name of the guru.)



Prasna Upanishad, Verse 1:1, trans by Swami Nikhilananda



Obviously, if they already knew Brahman (in the mystic yogi's terms), they would have no need of approaching a teacher. When the verse says the young men were already "devoted to Brahman" -- even "firm in Brahman" -- it simply meant they were making firm effort at chastity . Even the phrase "fuel in hand" is a reference to chastity and not merely to the convention of bringing a gift to a guru. Here is the very second verse:



"The rishi said to them: Stay with me a year more, practicing austerities, chastity, and faith .

Then you may ask questions according to your desire."



Prasna Upanishad, Verse 1:2



The guru ups the chastity ante here. Even though they had already been "firm in Brahman" (making a firm effort at brahmarcharya), he emphasizes it anew. To be sure it is attained, he won't even teach them until they have explicitly pursued it another year in his field. Moreover, along with a year's focused effort at chastity, they were to do other austerities, plus cultivate faith (shraddha) -- that fertile seedbed of divine realization. In the verses above the Sanskrit word, that the author translated as "chastity," was nothing but the word brahmacharya."



There are quite a few other verses in the Vedas and Upanishads just like those above, and just as clear. Notice in this verse that chastity, though easily seen as a kind of austerity itself, is called out distinctly from general austerities. Such is its importance.



Realize, incidentally, that these three things: austerities, chastity, and faith -- were the basic basic pursuits of the Christian saints and priests who established the European bhakti-yoga, Christianity. (Christianity is yoga.) When Christians realize this and go back to austerities, chastity, and the faith-fueled search for God-knowledge within, Christianity -- the great bhakti-yoga of the Europeans -- will come blazing back.



Chastity will do these three things from highest to lowest:



-- Set you on the ground and platform for divine realization.

-- Give you penetrating mind and divine protection

-- Give you influence

-- Give you a decent life, wife, and family and

the power to support with and cope with them.

-- Give you worldly success in any way you like.

-- Bring you back into the garden of Eden (by ceasing to destroy it through inner self-destruction)



Moral self-control is all win-win. (And of the thousands of orgasms that today's pornlings are having,

only ten are necessary to have a family of ten children.

Then the father with a spiritually-striving wife can become a good father and influential man through moving into self-control.)







Celibacy.info

