Sex, Spirituality and Transformation of Human Life

Most religious and spiritual paths have addressed the issue of sexuality from a viewpoint that turns it into some kind of sin or morality concern, and proscriptions about sex and responses to the sexual impulse mirror this focus on morality versus immorality. People who engage in sexual behaviour itside the accept norm in a particular society are stigmatised for those activities. The determination of what constitutes ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ is clearly based on the view of specific societies, and thus, can be seen as a ‘temporal’ determination not some kind of universal law or judgment. Obviously, forcing oneself sexually on another person without mutuality, or using sex as a way to control, bully or dominate another person shifts the general conversation somewhat where it breaches moral, legal and interpersonal human constraints.

Regardless of how a particular society views sex and sexual practices, the spiritual seeker needs to strip away the opinions, the prejudices, the prejudgments and the accepted morality to understand how the sexual power functions, what role it plays, and how it needs to be addressed in the context of the evolution of consciousness and the transformation of human existence.

In order to accomplish this, Sri Aurobindo has taken an entirely different view of sex and the sexual impulse. He places it in the context of the evolution of consciousness and the focus and use of the energy in relation to the required focus and force needed to accomplish the yogic objectives, as well as by looking at it in the context of the high probability of distraction by the arising of the sexual impulse; or by misuse of the higher powers when they open the lower vital chakras and, instead of acting to transform the energy, simply enhance the action of the original vital powers through increase of energy.

There are numerous examples of the misuse of spiritual force to gain sexual power. The idea that it can somehow be ‘managed’ is, for most people, an illusion perpetrated by the vital nature eager to continue its old ways with new forms of energetic support. This can lead to serious imbalances and failure in the spiritual pursuit for the individual seeker, and can cause extreme disruption to the environment within a spiritual community.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “I have stated very briefly in my previous letter my position with regard to the sex-impulse and Yoga. I may add here that my conclusion is not founded on any mental opinion or prconceived moral idea, but on probative facts and on observation and experience. I do not deny that so long as one allows a sort of separation between inner experience and outer consciousness, the latter being left as an inferior activity controlled but not transformed, it is quite possible to have spiritual experiences and make progress without any entire cessation of the sex-activity. The mind separates itself from the outer vital (life-parts) and the physical consciousness and lives its own inner life. But only a few can really do this with any completeness and the moment one’s experiences extend to the life-plane and the physical, sex can no longer be treated in this way. It can become at any moment a disturbing, upsetting and deforming force. I have observed that to an equal extent with ego (pride, vanity, ambition) and rajasic greeds and desires it is one of the main causes of spiritual casualties that have taken place in sadhana. The attempt to treat it by detachment without complete excision breaks down; the attempt to sublimate it, favoured by many modern mystics in Europe, is a most rash and perilous experiment. For it is when one mixes up sex and spirituality that there is the greatest havoc. Even the attempt to sublimate it by turning it towards the Divine as in the Vaishnava madhura bhava carries in it a serious danger, as the results of a wrong turn or use in this method so often show. At any rate in this Yoga which seeks not only the essential experience of the Divine but a transformation of the whole being and nature, I have found it an absolute necessity of the sadhana to aim at a complete mastery over the sex-force: otherwise the vital consciousness remains a turbid mixture, the turbidity affecting the purity of the spiritualised mind and seriously hindering the upwrd turn of the forces of the body. This Yoga demands a full ascension of the whole lower or ordinary consciousness to join the spiritual above it and a full descent of the spiritual (eventually of the supramental) into the mind, life and body to transform it. The total ascent is impossible so long as sex-desire blocks the way; the descent is dangerous so long as sex-desire is powerful in the vital. For at any moment an unexcised or latent sex-desire may be the cause of a mixture which throws back the true descent and uses the energy acquired for other purposes or turns all the action of the consciousness towards wrong experience, turbid and delusive. One must, therefore, clear this obstacle out of the way; otherwise there is either no safety or no free movement towards finality in the sadhana.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 4, Desire — Food — Sex, pp. 73-75