Is Celibacy Required For Spirituality?

What is the significance of celibacy on the spiritual path? Sadhguru explains that celibacy is just the surface of what once came from a very deep understanding. He describes brahmacharya as an effort to organize oneself so that everything you need is within yourself – to move from being a compulsive human being to a conscious one.

Transcript

The word celibacy does not describe or does not… is not the translation for brahmacharya. Brahmacharya means… Brahman means the ultimate, Charya means the path. You are on the path of the ultimate, That is brahmacharya. Celibacy is talking only about the physical aspect of holding yourself back. You are on a natural urge which is going on in the body and more in the mind. So celibacy is not the right thing to say when we say brahmacharya. What it means is, You are working to organize your energies in such a way that your joy, Your love, Everything that you need is within yourself. You have enough experience in life to know that nobody, However dear they may be, Is twenty-four hours reliable, Isn't it so? Yes? Yes or no? All of you have enough experience in life to know that, Isn't it? However dear and wonderful they are, Nobody in the world is reliable twenty-four hours at a time to maintain your love and joy, Isn't it so? Yes. Have you realized that or you are still hoping? So it's out of this wisdom because if one wants to really know higher dimensions of life, One thing that is necessary is that within you there is a constant sense of peacefulness and joyfulness. If this is not there, Then you will go after something. If you don't feel steadily peaceful and joyful, Then you will do compulsive activity of trying to be happy. So a brahmachari is somebody who is trying to organize his energies in such a way that to be peaceful and joyful is all his own. He is not going to lean on anybody for that. Have all the brahmacharis reached there? That's not the point. They are working towards it. They need support, They need atmosphere to make that happen for themselves. It's not a small task that they have taken up. Only once a human being's way has become like this, That his peace, His love, His joy is not dependent on anybody. He has the necessary background to spring up to another dimension. If this is not there, He will naturally get entangled in compulsive activity. So brahmacharya on one level fundamentally means to move from being a compulsive human being to a conscious human being. You may decorate your compulsiveness with all kinds of romance around it, But do you see it's a compulsive behavior? Yes? It is not a conscious behavior. You may have the whole world with you, It doesn't matter, But it is a compulsive behavior. You can write poems about it, You can write good… great stories about it, You can make movies about it, But fundamentally it's a compulsive behavior which you are trying to clothe in so many beautiful clothes just to not face the reality. I am not trying to take all the romance out of your life, Okay? Once someone understands that if I am involved in compulsive activity, I will never go where I want to go, Isn't it so? Yes? If one is compulsive in his life, There is no question of he having a goal to reach or attaining a certain state or whatever. Compulsiveness means a very deep sense of slavery, Isn't it? So one who has realized this naturally seeks to become conscious. So it is from this understanding that we said if you're really wanting to make a journey, You should drop your compulsiveness and bring consciousness to every aspect of your life. So that is brahmacharya. Necessity is an ugly word because without the necessary understanding nor necessary sadhana nor energy, You're just trying to hold yourself back, Then you will suffer. If your energies were organized in such a way that all the time you were high, Really high within yourself, You won't lean on anybody for these things, Isn't it? Oh, I'm not like that right now, What to do? As I told you, These things don't come unless you make some effort towards it. One can go through life with the compulsive patterns without much effort, You can allow the life to carry you on. I know right now the new age philosophy is let it flow. I don't know what they're letting flow anyway. See, Being a part of life, Being involved with the process of life on the surface is one thing and the core is another thing. Nature is on two different levels. One aspect of nature knows nothing other than self-preservation and procreation. This is the surface of nature. Your own nature if you take, If you take the nature of this body, It knows only self-preservation and procreation, It doesn't know anything else. So if you go by your physical nature, Naturally this is all that you will do, Survival and procreation. Eating, Sleeping, Reproducing, Dying, That's all that will happen. If you go by the ways of the body. But at the same time, There is another nature within you which is longing to expand. If you give it the whole existence, It will gobble up and still be hungry. Yes? Do you have that or no? If you feed the whole existence to this one, It will gobble up everything and still be hungry for more. So there is another dimension of nature within you which wants to expand in an unbounded way. Which one do you give in to is subject to who you are. If you give in to the physical nature, All you will know is just this. If you give in to the inner nature, Which wants to become boundless, Then the life is different. So if you have given in or if you have seen the ways of the inner nature are far beyond the ways of the physical nature, Naturally you will choose to create a situation in your life that is conducive for that. It is from this understanding that brahmacharya or sanyasa became a part of spiritual process. Celibacy is a western idea that is just to imitate the yogis of the past. All these things have been picked up at random by people. If you are not aware of this, Even six to eight thousand years ago, Indian yogis traveled all over Europe and Arabia. They established many things. Even when the Phoenicians were building things in Arabia, They were setting up their empire. Even then, The Indian architects, The Indian sculptors, The Indian elephants and the Indian yogis went, That's almost five, Six thousand years ago. If a team of elephants, Laborers, Sculptors, Architects and yogis have to be there, There must have been a much longer association before that, Isn't it? Suddenly one team won't end up there in those days. So wherever they went, They did create some awareness of what is the significance of their way of life. So people picked this up at random without the necessary understanding. That is how celibacy became a part of other cultures. What came from a very deep understanding, Just the surface of it they took. That will happen everywhere. See the yoga, Right now yoga means just twisting your body, Just the surface.

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🙏🏼 Thank you Thank you Thank you 🙏🏼

Fascinating exploration and layers of explanation! Learning that brahmacharya is an effort to organize oneself in the transition of moving from BE-I-ng a compulsive human to a conscious human BE-I-ng is helpful as I gain greater insight into my own compulsivities and insight into Gandhi’s 11 principles of “ahimsa”, one of which included celibacy, required of his 100+ intimate “subscribers”, living pro-ACT-I-vely, in community, during Gandhi’s lifetime. Much appreciated🥰! www.gratefulness.org, ahimsa of the www.compassioncourse.org