”The Role of Celibacy in the Spiritual Life”
(Swami Chidananda Ji)
Question: If you wanted to call it a stage, then it means you’d call it the stage where you start taking the spiritual life seriously.
Swami Ji: (cont.)
Finally, from a purely scientific and technical point of view, one of the yogas where celibacy is absolutely essential and indispensable is kundalini yoga. There is no compromise with that. Right from the beginning, it is absolutely essential and indispensable. Otherwise it is dangerous to go into kundalini yoga which is based upon pranayama and many mudras, bandhas and asanas.
That’s the “no” part of the answer.
The “yes” part is to state that in the total context of spiritual life in India, there are certain stages and states where one can be highly spiritual and yet at the same time be leading a normal sex life. That is true especially in the bhakti path—people who are following the path of love of God, devotion, prayer and worship, chanting the Divine Name, singing His glories. This path does not make any distinction between a celibate Brahmachari, a married householder, and a retired couple living a spiritually oriented life after they have finished their duties as householders. …
From "In woods of God Realization" Granth –
“The Spirit of Yajna”
There was a time when India had more forests and less human population. In those days the burning of Ghrita and other hydrocarbonates might be a factor, though very insignificant, in helping the vegetation in as much as it generated carbon-dioxide, the aerial food of plants. But in these days matters are reversed. We have practically no forests and overcrowded teeming population, and consequently too much of carbon-dioxide in the air already. That makes the people lazy. India needs more oxygen and ozone in these days and not carbon-dioxide.
Be it remembered that the chemical results of Havan affecting the air are exactly the same as those of feeding people. Now instead of wasting precious ghee into the mouth of artificial fire, why not offer even hard crusts of dry bread to the gastric fire (Jatharagni) which is eating up the flesh and bones of millions of starving but living Narayanas? That Havan is more needful in India. …
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”The Role of Celibacy in the Spiritual Life”
(Swami Chidananda Ji)
Question: If you wanted to call it a stage, then it means you’d call it the stage where you start taking the spiritual life seriously.
Swami Ji: It is perhaps precisely for this reason that Maharishi Patanjali put brahmacharya right at the very commencement of his eight-stage Raja Yoga and not at any later stage. It is one of the five vows that constitute the first stage. If he had thought that it was only important or essential at a later stage, he would have brought it in at the third or fourth stage. But no, he did it at the very beginning.
Swami Sivananda used to say: “Brahmacharya is the basis of immortality.” And in many places in the Upanishads it says: “Wisdom experience cannot come to one who has not his senses under restraint and who has not controlled the vagaries of his wandering mind.”
So I believe that it is not at some stage, but it is the all of the life spiritual. Because spiritual life is a transcendence of your human nature, human consciousness. And if it is a transcendence, you have to leave behind all that constitutes your human nature, your physicality. You will have to commence with it and keep on with it. You view celibacy in a positive manner, not as something anti-nature. You do not at all feel that you are doing any violence to yourself. …
From "In woods of God Realization" Granth –
“The Spirit of Yajna”
Coming now to the question of Yajna, we shall discuss it independently and impartially from different stand-points.
Havan ceremony forms a most important and necessary feature of Yajna as ordinarily understood. The most common argument on the lips of some of its present day votaries is; – “Havan purifies the air and it produces fragrant perfumes.” That is very far-fetched. The perfumes, delicious to smell like all other stimulants or “white lies of physiology,” exhilarate for the moment entailing a depression of spirits for reaction. Stimulants may help to borrow from our future store of energy but they borrow always at compound interest and never repay the loan.
But fragrant perfume is a very small product of Havan. By far the most significant product is carbon-dioxide, which is positively pernicious. …
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