This is an interview with Bhakti Vijnana Goswami Maharaj (dr. Vadim Tuneev) – an outstanding personality. Back in his early years he received PhD in Chemistry from Moscow State University. He was a very promising young metropolitan scientist. But in the process of looking for the origin of life he gave up hope on materialistic (scientific) explanations and began to study different religious and philosophy schools. The most complete answers he found in Vedic manuscripts. He emigrated to the West in caution to be persecuted by KGB for this way thinking. Living in the West he translated and systemized ancient books – heritage of great sages and saints of the East. He visited India and lived there for periods of time. He travelled around half of the world with his lectures. He has extensive philosophy, religious, psychology knowledge and is familiar with Ayurveda (ancient Indian medicine). One may be impressed by his expertise, but first of all one is dazzled with his humility and huge sense of Love to all living beings. We spent a lot of time together every day so I know it for a fact. I prefer interview style of the article. Despite knowing that Bhakti Vijnana Goswami has been an austere monk for 30 years. The topic is a bit provocative — sex.
Rami Bleckt
R.B.: It’s known that you have been austere monk for almost 30 years. What do you do this for? How do you benefit from the chosen lifestyle?
B. V. G.: Everyone is doing what they choose for the only purpose in a life – happiness. Different people have their own versions of happiness and they try to achieve it in different ways.
Eventually there is only one answer to all these questions: I do it for being happy and I have no reason to complain that I couldn’t achieve my goal. For some people strict abstinence seems to be too high price for happiness. And others can’t believe that a person who leads this lifestyle can be happy. Nevertheless the fact remains the same: I’m happy.
R. B.: Yes, but I am completely convinced that 90% of people will be skeptical about it. Even Freud said that sexual impulse is major drive in this world and the main pleasure is sex. Generally speaking, it is a known fact.
B. V. G.: I also agree with this assertion: sexual impulse is main driver in this world and the main pleasure is sex. But according to ancient manuscripts, happiness and pleasure are not quite equivalent concepts, in contrast to what it is considered to be in the modern society. The man can have all the opportunities for pleasure and at the same time he can be totally unhappy. If you look around, you see the examples are around us.
Wealthy people have all pleasures of the World and often suffer from depressive syndromes and insomnias. Most people attending psychologist’s counseling have a considerable income. Over and over again people who practice the philosophy of Hedonism are trying hard to «squeeze» material enjoyment with all available means. But along with this they are deprived of sleep, peace, harmony, capacity to love and other exalted feelings.
Even more, desire for material enjoyment on top of everything else can lead to various forms of addictions including substance abuse, not to mention alcoholism. So with alcohol and drugs people also try to “get pleasure” if we can call it so. Whether they are happy or not is a big question. One thing is for sure – excessive desire for material enjoyment leads to the fact that their hearts harden. And can there be a truly happy but hard-hearted man? True human happiness is to love, to care for others and to give.
Those who are skeptical and don’t believe that I’m happy should first answer the question: “In what moments of life you were genuinely happy?” In what moments are we happier: when we take something and assign it to ourselves or when we give, care for others and feel our necessity? When a mother is happy? When she sees happiness of her child and she rejoices in his happiness. And her happiness is bigger than that of her child. The real human happiness is to love, and to love means to give.
Sometimes I give an example: let’s imagine you are the richest and the most powerful man in the whole world. And you are even the most beautiful one. But at the same time nobody loves you and it is reciprocal. Everything is available to you and in a moment anything can appear in front of you, but along with all that wealth, nobody loves you and you don’t love anybody. Would you be happy? No, you wouldn’t. All enjoyments you will get using your richness and power will be hollow and will bore you soon.
On the other hand, when everybody loves you and you are able to love other people you will be happy in any case, no matter how rich you are. Consequently, the concept of “pleasure” and the concept of “happiness” are not equal. Everybody wants to be happy in this world. But very often they don’t seek happiness where it is. Yes, sex is really the most powerful pleasure apart from the drugs.
The pleasure from sex is caused by endorphins – a morphine-like substance naturally produced by the body. What do people who are addicted to sex obtain? They get endless anxieties, disturbances and jealousy, weakening of immune system and memory and even complete destruction of the personality. Sexual context is one of the main reasons for significant number of suicides and murders.
R. B.: When you say – “to love people”. What kind of love are you talking about? As you are a lonely monk, you have no wife or children.
B. V. G.: It is one more common misconceptions that you can love only your relatives and friends. First, nowadays people often don’t know what it means to love each other even within a family; and what being close means. And even if we love our relatives, this love is often overshadowed by selfish expectations. At the same time there are a lot of examples of Christian monks and saints who didn’t have family, but every person that visited them perceived such kind of love they did not get from anyone else – neither a father, nor a mother.
Initially the monastic way of living, when a man makes a vow of chastity, is designed for a person to learn to love God. That is what this for. And in such a way a person will gain the ability to love all of God’s creations and all beings. It is impossible to love God and at the same time to hate His creation. Love of God involves the love of all creation, all living beings. Happy person, who was lucky to find true love for God can rejoice and radiate love every moment of his life, giving it to all those in need.
But if a person limits his love only to his relatives, it often turns into hatred for someone else who is a little further away. For example, love for motherland drives a person to go to war against another country. And love for religion begets hatred of all those who ha soother beliefs.
R. B.: But often people talk about love for all and indeed they love no one.
B. V. G.: It is hard to disagree. Dostoyevsky wrote: “… the more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular”. Abstract love for all mankind is nothing like cutesy narcissism. Therefore, speaking about love for people, in the first place, I mean the love for God, which cannot be abstract. And the love for Creator permeated with humility and patience means love for all of his creation and all living beings.
R. B.: And could you tell us more specifically what you mean by love for God? For most people God is abstract too and many people just do not believe in God. If you still tell them that they must love Him, it is generally difficult to understand.
B. V. G.: The first thing to understand is that God is not an abstraction but a Personality, and everything is definitive in his creation. The idea of the existence of a certain intelligent Creator is just a matter of common sense. Any sane person looking around will inevitably come to a conclusion that everything that he sees was created with a specific plan and purpose. So whatever we look at, no matter how small or huge the aspect of creation, which we take, is, we always see a wonderful harmony, intelligence, beauty and order.
Any sane person is wondering where this order is taken from. We know that matter, left to itself, according to the second law of thermodynamics, creates chaos, but in spite of that, everything is in order and interconnected in our world. Day follows night, instead of one time of year comes another, appropriate vegetables and fruits we cat eat ripe. Everything in this world is working on precise indisputable laws.
I do not say anything of living organisms — the degree of order or complexity of a living organism is so perfect that it makes the accidental origin of life absolutely unreal. Even scientists who are trying to defend this absurd theory (random origin of life), at heart, I’m sure, do not believe in it. The reason is that no one has so far offered any reasonable mechanism of such complex and developed complete systems as living organisms.
All of this leads us to an idea that everything we can see is some kind of Intellect which is beyond all this. The experience of the great sages and saints for thousands of years and pray v of religious people indicate the presence of this Intellect. And even astrology or the laws of karma — they all say that there is some intelligent force behind everything that we can see, that all of this is not the result of random chance.
To love God means to love the One who emanated all the existed material things, which we are already bound to. We can see how wonderful this creation is. The «Bhagavad Gita» says that “Know that all opulent, beautiful and glorious creations spring from but a spark of My splendor” (Krishna, BG — 10.41). Krishna — this is one of God’s names that means «infinitely attractive». Love for God is the love for the power that has created me and gave me, as well as all beings, the ability and the opportunity to live.
Love begins with gratitude. If I am a grateful person, I will love the father or mother, who gave me the opportunity to be born. In the same way, even more so, I have to love the one who I owe my existence in the universe, because my existence received from father and mother is temporarily, while my existence in the universe of God is forever. Loving God — is to love our own power, the one who gave birth to us.
Of course, you are absolutely right: to love someone, you need to know him, because if we do not believe in someone or don’t know someone how to love him? But we can learn about God in part looking around, watching nature and the beauty of the world. If this world is so beautiful, how much more beautiful must be the one who gave birth to him? If this world is so intelligent and so inexhaustible, how much inexhaustible and intelligent should be the one who created it? If this world is filled with such power and strength — we can see how powerful material energy — how much more powerful must be the Creator who created the world?
R. B.: It is a little abstract… Many people don’t even love their parents. They say: “What do I love my father for? He is a drunk, he is this and that…” And many people similar might ask: “But what God has done me good? He has created me. I would be better off without it. I have a sick body, miserable personal life, and I am poor. And how I can love Him for this?”
B. V. G.: You just need to understand who and what we really need to love and whose fault it is. People often do not see the good that they have, and even if they notice it, they credit it to themselves. Such is a nature of people. Pride does not allow a person to exercise even simple gratitude. Anyone who gives is faced with lack of gratitude from those about whom he cares. And above all it refers to God. Yes, people are willing to claims against Him. Yet one shall start not with complaints but attempts to understand what God has given us. Any honourable and grateful man looks and admits that every day the sun rises given to us by God.
We breathe the air with full lungs, and feel the pulse of life within. The body, whatever it may be — and it may be sick, nevertheless it is filled life, it filled with own beauty — each body, even the ugliest. The man must love and be grateful to Creator-God even for the mere fact that there is air to breathe. Is that reason enough? If all of a sudden — and God can do it — the air will disappear, then perhaps it is too late to be grateful to God for the air that was… But people tend to begin to appreciate what they had only when they are deprived of it, and they do not realize how much they are given.
Anna Akhmatova (russian poetess) wrote the following:
We thought: we’re poor, we have nothing,
but when we started losing one after the other
so each day became
remembrance day,
we started composing poems
about God’s great generosity
and — our former riches.
Orange and tangerine groves generously bring us fruit, mango trees, avocados … — a great variety of fruit! The sun shines in the sky, its light and heat are inexhaustible… What more does a human need? How much human has from God… Who did it? Who did give us an endless variety of fruits, vegetables, allowing us to live? Who did take care of the tiniest aspects of our existence here? But finally, everything important, including the mind, God has given us. As one philosopher says: “Give thanks to the blessed God, for He has made easy that which is necessary, and made difficult that which is unnecessary” (A History of Russian Christianity, Vol. III, by Grigori Savvich Skovoroda).
R. B.: But 75 % of the population goes hungry. They do not have any fruit, no vegetables, no good water…
B. V. G.: The only question is “whose fault is this?” When people live in harmony with nature, in harmony with God, when people are open to God and show gratitude, they do not face the problems that we have already created. Yes, soon there will be no a fresh air to breathe. Soon people can really be thanking the Creator for what it has been. But who spoiled this fresh air — God or people driven by an insatiable greed for pleasure?
In fact, why don’t 75 % of people have enough of the food? Because of 25 % of people throw away food. God gave the earth resources such that it can feed a population of ten, a hundred times more than there are now. Yet people are starving, and this hunger was created artificially. It was created by greed of some people rolling in the lap of luxury. All our problems are a result of ingratitude and forgetfulness of God.
So, ungrateful children are deprived of the help of their parents, but fault doesn’t lie with parents. Here we must remember the law of karma, the universal law of cause and effect. If I have something missing, first blame yourself and do not try to look for someone’s guilt somewhere. Unfortunately, human psychology is such that all that we have, we take for granted or what we have achieved themselves, on their own, but if we lack something, then blame someone else, and after all it is God’s guilt. But in fact it is otherwise. All that we have is not our merit, but a merit of God, and if we miss something, it is our guilt.
We all create our own problems due to imperfect intelligence. If we look back at our life and honestly ask who is to blame for the problems that arise in our way, we clearly see that throughout our lives we are faced with the same problems. Is it God’s fault? No, it is ours. Because of their imperfect intelligence people want to enjoy a carefree life, violating Divine and human laws, thereby inevitably bringing on the suffering. Therefore the Vedic scriptures say that a person has six enemies, and they are all within us. Those enemies are lust, anger, greed, arrogance, a tendency to fall into the illusion and, finally, envy or human malice.
These six enemies living in our hearts are the root cause of all our troubles. And the biggest problem is that we foolishly consider them our friends. Nobody wants to have a heart attack, but, nevertheless, all are angry. Nobody wants to have cirrhosis of the liver, but nevertheless all drink alcohol. Nobody wants to have a stroke, but, nevertheless, everybody is concerned, very nervous and eats fatty foods. Who is to blame — the God or ourselves? All our diseases come from anxiety. And where are the concerns from? It is caused by greed, anger and fear. What is a root cause of fear? The lack of believe to God. We identify ourselves with the perishable material body and do not understand that the soul is eternal.
R. B.: As far as I know, you are a scientist, you have a PhD in Chemistry. But the path you chose is one of the main branches of Hinduism, it has nothing to do with science, and even seems to contradict it. Why did you make such a choice?
B. V. G.: The subject of my study was not chemistry but biochemistry, and I studied the nature of life. And the more I studied it, the less likely it seemed to me that life arose by chance, and it is the basic premise of materialistic science that life is just a random event on Earth. This was one of the turning points in my spiritual biography. I began to think about origin of life and its meaning. In the beginning I was certain that the meaning of life is merely to execute some genetic inherent program of within.
Yet at some point I started to wonder: where did this genetic program and where I come from this genetic program and who is this “I”? As a result of my search, I found the «Bhagavad Gita» and other manuscripts of ancient India. All this is known as Hinduism, but I did not seek Hinduism (or any other religion), I was looking for the truth. Ancient manuscripts revealed to me a lot and answered many of my questions, which previously tormented me and I could not find answers either in philosophy or in science. In this sense, the Vedic spiritual philosophy is a unique spiritual system. Strictly speaking, it cannot be called a religion. It is a holistic, very rational and complete view of the world, which implies a certain lifestyle.
Vedic manuscripts differ from the most common religions by the absence of dogmatism. Usually religions are based on a certain set of dogmas, and a human has no right to question the dogma, that is alien for me as I’m a scientist. Any person who is brought up as a scientist should be questioning everything. Vedic spiritual philosophy is very close to me because it stands out with logic and rationality. Vedic philosophy provides synthesis, or an alloy of science and religion. But, in contrast to the modern science, the Vedic philosophy provides a holistic view of the world. When I embarked on this path, there was a coup in my mind.
Previously, I looked at the world as a conglomerate of accidents that eventually gave birth to harmony and created me. All was logical in my world except absurd starting point. My whole life consisted of trying to make sense of what has absurd start and doomed to at least the absurd end. In the «Bhagavad Gita» I discovered a fundamentally different view of the world — it was the creation with logical grounds, purpose and meaning. Of course, my materialistic perception that was formed over decades did not immediately retreat and not without a fight, but in the end the spiritual philosophy of the Vedas won.
Firstly, it explained better and more complete what I saw around me. And secondly, it gave me the hope to live a meaningful life. Much later I came across the words of C.G. Jung, who could better explained my then choice: “Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is convinced that they make sense; he is crushed when, on the top of his misfortunes, he has to admit that he is taking part in a “tale told by an idiot”” (“Man and His Symbols” by Carl Gustav Jung).
I cannot say that the philosophy of the Vedas explain everything to me. There are certain things that remain unclear to me, especially from the sphere of comparison Vedic concepts and discoveries of modern science. But on the other hand, the philosophy of the Vedas is very extensive and good developed. And these concepts explain nicely and accurately the variety of phenomena of this world that science cannot explain.
For example, the science does not even try to explain the predictive power of Vedic astrology and astrological methods. How do the stars influence human? And how does a destiny assemble depending on when and where person was born? Vedic astrology is a purely empirical discipline, which accumulated huge evidence, but from the perspective of modern science it is a pseudoscience. However, the philosophy of the Vedas is very easy to explain it all. The same philosophy underlies these practical disciplines like Ayurveda (medicine), Vastu Shastra (Vedic architecture) or yoga. These disciplines are based on the same principles of metaphysical philosophy of the Vedas and we can see how effective they are.
R. B.: And what is your purpose of life?
B. V. G.: My purpose of life, as I have already said, to become happy. Happiness is the only goal of all human efforts. But as a result of more than thirty years of experience of yoga practice, I became convinced that real happiness comes to a person when he acquires a complete, all-consuming love for God. Happiness is a state where there was nothing but love in the human heart. So ultimately my goal is to purify the heart so that there is no room left for anything else but love.
R. B.: Love to God is quite an abstract concept. Can an ordinary person develop it in everyday life?
B. V. G.: Love of God ceases to be an abstraction when we realize that God can chat right now. God is in everyone’s heart, God manifests Himself in the form of countless energies in this world. Knowing this, we can love and serve God practically, not in an abstract way.
The sense of God’s presence in our lives becomes a reality to the extent the human heart is cleansed. Purification of the heart — is also a very specific thing. We know that all human problems occur in the long run because of the filth. People clean their liver, stomach, intestines, kidneys, because they know that if the toxins (waste) accumulated in these organs, they will suffer and fall ill. But no one ever said that it is necessary to purify the consciousness, the mind, which is sometimes called the heart.
Heart — this is our main organ, and when I say «heart» I mean the consciousness, the mind, not a piece of flesh, which is beating and pumping blood. The rest of the dirt to a large extent is the result of the fact that it is accumulated in our minds. I agree that the love of God, especially in the initial stages, it is a very abstract concept. As long as God does not become a reality for us, the love of God, too, will not be a reality. However, purification of the heart, purification of consciousness — it is a very concrete concept. Just as a person immediately feels relieved after cleanse the stomach, intestine or liver — it feels easy, even more so, he feels the lightness and happiness when purified his consciousness.
In the beginning there is no sense to set a goal to love God, but the love for God manifests in a natural way (as well as love of neighbour and everything else) in a pure heart, pure consciousness.
Therefore, the task of any spiritual man or any method of yoga is to purify the mind. People meditate to calm the mind and obtain clarity. Our method of purification of consciousness is called kirtan. Kirtan (chanting of the holy names of God -. Ed.) is singing, chanting.
Ayurveda says, for example, that the chanting or kirtan has the same cleansing effect on the mind, as ginger — on the body. Ginger — one of the most powerful drugs, the most useful of the spices consumed. If a person all the time eating a little ginger, then he forgets about many diseases. Similarly, if a person is singing kirtan, i.e. focuses his mind on the holy name of God, in his mind will never be any problems and love of God manifested itself in his heart.
R. B.: So your main advice is chanting the holy names. But many people are working all day, and it is difficult for them.
B. V. G.: I do not agree with you. Kirtan — it’s not hard. No matter a man is doing — working or walking on the street — he can sing the Holy Name silently within or out loud. I began to chant during the period of my life when I had to work for ten to twelve hours a day, and the first thing I felt — it is a feeling of lightness and happiness in the heart. And even if someone cannot do it at work, he can always allocate a meditation for half an hour at home. In the end, it all depends on what importance we attach to this — on the important things for us, we always have the time.
Every day man must do some exercise to keep himself in good physical shape. A man has to clean up the house every day, remove the dust daily so it does not accumulate in a thick layer. In the same way a person should take care of the purity of his consciousness, otherwise the mind ceases to function properly.
Vedas say that the consciousness is compared tot he mirror, was it can reflect. The more clear the consciousness the better one understand the reality, as his consciousness will reflect it correctly. Yet if one does not purify the consciousness, there will be dust settling and it will stop reflecting the reality correctly and he will live in the world of distorted values. Therefore he will suffer and will cause suffering to others as well.
Therefore, we have to clean our mirror every day, so that it was clear, one must clear the mind with the sound of the holy name, prayers or other practices of meditation that it was just more or less healthy working form.
Not to mention that all these practices of purification of consciousness make the mind more focused and therefore more capable of solving even the most basic practical problems and challenges that confront people every day. The more the consciousness is scattered, the less the person is able to tackle any, even some simple tasks. Kirtan helps a person to make the mind very powerful and focused.
R. B.: Let us return to the topic with which we began to talk. Say, from a physical point of view, if you find it difficult to be a monk? Just now, there is the very fashionable theory in the West that the healthier people are the more they are engaged in sex.
B. V. G.: It is a false and even dangerous theory, because the man, who is wasting very powerful sexual energy in vain on meaningless sexual excesses, becomes very weak. We can see everywhere that men are becoming weaker. In our time, almost no real men left. Men are becoming more like women.
Nowadays we can meet less and less masculine qualities like willpower, determination, a clear vision of goals, the ability to offer protection. And one of the reasons for this is that now almost no one cares about the preservation of sexual energy.
Woman spends naturally embedded in the body of its powerful energy, capable of giving life to a new person, only once a month: when ovaries matures. But man, fueled by propaganda can do it thirty or more times per month. Thus, he simply wastes his vitality, loosens his mind and body, in this way he just brings the time of his death.
For example, in ancient Sparta, all the soldiers were strictly chaste, which made them very strong. We can see that the last civilization preserved the strength and power only as long as it complied with certain restrictions, and especially sex. Once these restrictions were removed, the civilization dies.
And, unfortunately, it is the destiny of our civilization — I think, we will become witnesses to the death of this civilization precisely because the civilization that has become very weak. Sexual energy, if it is not to waste is converted into the body’s immune power. Why do people say, engaged in sexual excesses, there is AIDS when the immune system is completely destroyed?
It is because they undermine the immune system by their actions. People, who have too much sex, suffer in the old age and often become insane, fall into childhood. Special danger is represented by sexual intercourse at an early age, when the human body is not yet finished forming. This is stated in the yarn-sastra, «If a child has become a man of sixteen, then at sixty, he will once again be a child.»
The energy that a man loses while ejaculation equals power, he would have spent, doing hard physical labor for ten days or strenuous mental work for three days. In yoga sutras it is said: «The ejaculation leads to death, the preservation of the ejaculation gives life.»
In other words, even from a financial point of view, sexual excesses are harmful, not to mention the spiritual aspect.
R. B.: I can understand that sexual excesses are harmful to the physical level, but all the same restrictions that impose sexual relations some religions, seem excessive and even unnatural. In the end the sexual impulse is naturally inherent in us..
B. V. G.: Exactly. And this impulse has its purpose. Sex is designed for a specific purpose — birth of a new life. When the sex is used to this, it becomes sacred.
The sanctity of marriage is not that the priest blesses their union, and thereby gives the husband and wife complete freedom of sexual relations. Sacred marriage becomes only when it serves the true purpose of marriage — conception of good children.
If we consider sex as a way to relax and have fun, it leads to a degradation of man. Moreover, we see that the conception of the child is becoming more difficult for the people of modern civilization. According to statistics from 15 to 20% of people in developed countries are faced with the problem of infertility.
As for religion, some restrictions apply to all cultures and all religions to have sex. But as usual, religion doesn’t explain that bans. It’s common, especially now, to provide the superficial reasons — evolution, public morals and so on. Perhaps the clearest explanation exists in chapter 7 of Romans.
Why is sex still bad? To the fact that sex causes us to identify ourselves with the body and it is therefore a cause of death. «For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.» Sex, being very bright material expertise, prevents a person to feel his being outside and apart from the body, on the contrary — it attracts us even more to the body as a source of pleasure.
R. B.: But most people are attached to sex, and even if they choose abstinence, they thoughts return obsessively to the sexual pleasure.
B. V. G.: Therefore, there is the institution of marriage, but even in marriage it is recommended a certain degree of abstinence. The laws of Manu — set of laws that govern human life Vedic culture, says that if a man comes to his wife once a month, this is equivalent to saying that they fully comply with the vow of chastity. It’s like a natural rhythm in which a man can have sex without much harm to himself.
As a woman naturally loses her energy once a month, and a man can without any consequences for themselves to have sex once a month.
However, any excess sooner or later leads to physical and mental problems. Of course, the man who is used to excess, it is difficult to switch to another way of life, simply because he had already developed a bad habit. The stronger you are obtained from action to receive fun, the easier it is formed a habit that then enslaves us. The habit of sex — it is exactly the same habit as a habit to drugs, alcohol or smoking.
A person who is accustomed to smoking, it is very difficult to quit smoking. But if he hangs in there, he realizes that the difficult period that he had to endure, was worth it, because he is freed from this relationship and feels much lighter and, furthermore, to a much greater extent able to respect himself because defeated disastrous habit.
R. B.: As for those who live in the West, to follow it? After all, this civilization permeated with sex: in the media, on the street advertising half-naked women on television there are movies with a variety of erotic moments. In one hour you can see on television about a hundred allusions to sex, so in the West to follow these restrictions are much more complicated.
B. V. G.: Of course it is difficult, however, especially during the transition period, it is better if people limit their contact with carriers of such information. If this is not done, then of course it is practically impossible to resist. All stimulating or provoking hints will excite the mind and cause a person to think about it. Just as a person who has decided to fast, must, especially at first, far be from the places where people eat the tempting smells of food and so on. The man who wants observe chastity to some degree, must limit their contact with these information sources.
We know that it is strictly monitored in the ancient civilizations of the fact that human contact with inciting lust of information was limited as much as possible. Still in traditional Muslim countries, a woman has no right to strip, and man has no right to look at the naked body of a woman. Unfortunately, modern civilization has decided to lift all the restrictions, but also the consequences of this are also quite grim.
But ultimately no artificial constraints could help. Swami Sivananda, the great teacher of yoga, who wrote a treatise on how to observe chastity, wrote: «Tiger, once tasted human flesh, cannot eat anything else. So the mind — is it once enjoyed sexual pleasure — cannot think of anything else.»
To let go of obsession called lust, one can do so by returning to the natural, original state of soul — a state of love for God. Unfortunately, some of the teachers of our time, following the lower (degraded) public taste declared sex a path to know the Divine. There are people who advocate the so-called tantric sex and the like.
However, Vedic culture, rather than to relegate religion to the level of sex, it elevates sex to the level of religiosity. Ultimately, in the Vedas it is said that every soul is the beloved of God. True love is always seeking union with an idealized alter ego — otherness of our Self. And a religion is looking for the same.
In the very depths of the hearts every soul is seeking the infinite object for love. When the search stops, love goes, and human ability to love dies.
Spiritual science must help a person to find the true meaning of the sexual impulse, which any human being experiences, and help him to sublimate lust, turning needs of the body into pure strive for the infinite love of God — the original source of the supreme beauty and bliss.
R. B.: Thank you so much!
