The transmutation of sexual energy
Excerpt from Kishor Gandhi’s book Light on life-problems,
In this excerpt from Kishor
Gandhi’s book Light on life-problems, Sri Aurobindo eludicates on the
spiritual purpose behind the transmutation of sexual energies and whether
psychological disorders can be caused by abstinence. Please note that
this exchange occurred in the early twentieth century and therefore contains
references to some personalities who were prominent at that time.
Question: Balzac, the famous French novelist, was of the
opinion that indulgence in sex greatly hampers the high type of mental
activity. According to him, “The man of genius is frigid. When he tries to lead
both lives, the intellectual life and the love life, the man of genius dies, as
Raphael died (it seems he died at 37 after a night of excessive sex) and
Lord Byron.” So also Havelock Ellis, recognised as the world’s greatest
authority on sex, maintains that to increase artistic and mental capacity and
force it is necessary to restrain sexual activity. “The brain and the sexual
organs,” he says, “are yet the great rivals in using up bodily energy, and
there is an antagonism between extreme brain vigour and extreme sexual vigour,
even though they may sometimes both appear at different periods in the same
individual”. We find this evidenced in the life of some great masters of art
like Beethoven and Mozart, in whose life sexual indulgence played a much
smaller part than in the life of an average man. This would seem to imply that it
is necessary to conserve sexual energy for the energisation and intensification
of higher intellectual and aesthetic life. How far is this view
justifiable ?
Answer: That is correct. The sex-energy can be
controlled and diverted from the sex-purpose and used for aesthetic and
artistic or other creation and productiveness or preserved for heightening of
the intellectual or other energies. Entirely controlled, it can be turned
into a force of spiritual energy also. This was well known in ancient India and
was described as the conversion of retas into ojas by
Brahmacharya. Retas, the sex-fluid, consists of two elements, one
meant for sex-purposes, the other as a basis of general energy, and if the
sex-action is not indulged and the sex-fluid is prevented from being spent
away, it turns into ojas. The whole theory of Brahmacharya is
based upon that by the Yogis.
This is a list of Sanskrit
terms to help understanding
·
Retas = sexual fluid.
·
Tapas = spiritual heat felt in the body during meditation.
· Ojas = spiritual vigor which is felt after union with and
immersion into cosmic energies.
·
Tejas = spiritual light observed within.
·
Vidyut = electrical power which courses through the body
during Yoga.
Question: What is the process by which ‘retas‘ (sex
fluid) is transformed into ‘ojas‘ (vigor)?
Answer: The fundamental physical unit is the retas,
in which the tejas, the heat and light and electricity in a man, is
involved and hidden. All energy is thus latent in the retas. This energy
may be either expended physically or conserved. All passion, lust, desire
wastes the energy by pouring it, either in the gross form or a sublimated
subtle form, out of the body. On the other hand, all self-control
conserves the energies in the retas, and conservation always brings with
it increase. But the needs of the physical body are limited and the excess of
energy must create a surplus which has to turn itself to some use other than
the physical. According to the ancient theory, retas is jala(fluid),
full of light and heat and electricity, in one word, of tejas.
1.
The excess of the retas turns
first into heat or tapas which stimulates the whole system, and it is
for this reason that all forms of self-control and austerity are called tapas
or tapasya, because they generate the heat or stimulus which is a
source of powerful action and success.
2.
Secondly, it turns to tejas
or light, the energy which is at the source of all knowledge.
3.
Thirdly, it turns to vidyut
or electricity, which is at the basis of all forceful action whether
intellectual or physical.
In the vidyut again is
involved the ojas, or pranashakti, the primal energy which
proceeds from ether. The retas, refining from jala to tapas,
tejas and vidyut and from vidyut to ojas, fills the
system with physical strength, energy and brain-power and in its last form of ojas
rises to the brain and informs it with that primal energy which is the most
refined form of matter and nearest to spirit. It is ojas that creates a
spiritual force or virya, by which a man attains to spiritual knowledge,
spiritual love and faith, spiritual strength. It follows that the more we can
by Brahmacharya increase the store of tapas(heat), tejas(light),
vidyut(electric) and ojas(vigor), the more we shall fill
ourselves with utter energy for the works of the body, heart, mind and spirit.
Question: Many eminent psychologists, doctors and thinkers
believe that complete sexual abstinence is dangerous and may lead to serious
nervous trouble and even mental derangement. They maintain that the new form of
energy produced from the sublimation of sexual energy may be harmful and may
lead to perversities and morbidities. Rene Guyon, for example, points out:
“When the libido is repressed, when its impetus is crushed back, it is forced
to find an outlet by some other route …. But this compensation is not
necessarily useful, superior and worthy of admiration. It can just as well be
harmful and destructive.” How far is this true?
Answer: It is a fact that sex suppressed in outward action
but indulged in other ways may lead to disorders of the system and brain troubles.
That is the root of the medical theory which discourages sexual abstinence. But
these things happen only when there is either secret indulgence of a perverse
kind replacing the normal sexual activity or else an indulgence of it in a kind
of subtle vital way by imagination or by an invisible vital interchange of an
occult kind; harm never occurs when there is a true effort at mastery and abstinence.
Question: The Freudian system of psycho-analysis has
attributed a large number of physical and mental disorders to suppressed sexual
desire. To what extent are the assertions of this system true?
Answer: The psycho-analysis of Freud takes up a certain
part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the
lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and
attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in
the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science, at once rash, fumbling and
crude. As in all infant sciences, the universal habit of the human mind to take
a partial or local truth, generalize it unduly and try to explain a whole field
of Nature in its narrow terms runs riot here. Moreover, the exaggeration of the
importance of suppressed sexual complexes is a dangerous falsehood and it can
have a nasty influence and tend to make the mind and vital more and not less
fundamentally impure than before.
