Sexuual energy, Ojas and Self-realization
by Swami Vivekananda
The "Ojas" is that which makes the
difference between man and man. The man who has much Ojas is the leader of men.
It gives a tremendous power of attraction. Ojas is manufactured from the
nerve-currents. It has this peculiarity: it is most easily made from that force
which manifests itself in the sexual powers. If the powers of the sexual
centres are not frittered away and their energies wasted (action is only
thought in a grosser state), they can be manufactured into Ojas.
The two great
nerve-currents of the body start from the brain, go down on each side of the
spinal cord, but they cross in the shape of the figure 8 at the back of the
head. Thus the left side of the body is governed by the right side of the head.
At the lowest point of the circuit is the sexual centre, the Sacral Plexus. The
energy conveyed by these two currents of nerves comes down, and a large amount
is continually being stored in the Sacral Plexus. The last bone in the spine is
over the Sacral Plexus and is described in symbolic language as a triangle; and
as the energy is stored up beside it, this energy is symbolised by a
serpent.
Consciousness and subconsciousness work through these
two nerve-currents. But superconsciousness takes off the nerve current when it
reaches the lower end of the circuit, and instead of allowing it to go up and
complete the circuit, stops and forces it up the spinal cord as Ojas from the
Sacral Plexus. The spinal cord is naturally closed, but it can be opened to form
a passage for this Ojas.
As the current
travels from one centre of the spinal cord to another, you can travel from one
plane of existence to another. This is why the human being is greater than
others, because all planes, all experiences, are possible to the spirit in the
human body. We do not need another; for man can, if he likes, finish in his
body his probation and can after that become pure spirit. When the Ojas has
gone from centre to centre and reaches the Pineal Gland (a part of the brain to
which science can assign no function), man then becomes neither mind nor body,
he is free from all bondage.
The great danger of psychic powers is that man
stumbles, as it were, into them, and knows not how to use them rightly. He is
without training and without knowledge of what has happened to him. The danger
is that in using these psychic powers, the sexual feelings are abnormally
roused as these powers are in fact manufactured out of the sexual centre. The
best and safest way is to avoid psychic manifestations, for they play the most
horrible pranks on their ignorant and untrained owners.
To go back to symbols. Because this movement of the
Ojas up the spinal cord feels like a spiral one, it is called the
"snake". The snake, therefore, or the serpent, rests on the bone or
triangle. When it is roused, it travels up the spinal cord; and as it goes from
centre to centre, a new natural world is opened inside us — the Kundalini is
roused.
The nerve centre at the base of the spine near the
sacrum is most important. It is the seat of the generative substance of the
sexual energy and is symbolised by the Yogi as a triangle containing a tiny
serpent coiled up in it. This sleeping serpent is called Kundalini, and to
raise this Kundalini is the whole object of Raja-Yoga.
The great sexual force, raised from animal action and
sent upward to the great dynamo of the human system, the brain, and there
stored up, becomes Ojas or spiritual force. All good thought, all prayer,
resolves a part of that animal energy into Ojas and helps to give us spiritual
power.
This Ojas is the real man and in human beings alone is it possible for
this storage of Ojas to be accomplished. One in whom the whole animal sex force
has been transformed into Ojas is a god. He speaks with power, and his words
regenerate the world.
The Yogi pictures this serpent
as being slowly lifted from stage to stage until the highest, the pineal gland,
is reached. No man or woman can be really spiritual until the sexual energy,
the highest power possessed by man, has been converted into Ojas. No force can
be created; it can only be directed.
Therefore we must learn to control the
grand powers that are already in our hands and by will power make them
spiritual instead of merely animal. Thus it is clearly seen that chastity is
the corner-stone of all morality and of all religion. In Raja-Yoga especially,
absolute chastity in thought, word, and deed is a sine qua non. The same
laws apply to the married and the single.
If one wastes the most potent forces of one’s being,
one cannot become spiritual. All history teaches us that the great seers of all
ages were either monks and ascetics or those who had given up married life;
only the pure in life can see God.
A clip by Dr Robert Svoboda on Ojas
taken from the 2nd International Ayurveda & Yoga Conference - Sydney 2009