I have always maintained that there are two parts of the body which move even though they have no bone to support them: the tongue and the penis (or clitoris). These organs are made to move by the ego alone. They can take you to the heights of success if they are controlled, and if they are misused — if you make just a single mistake in your sadhana — down you go, divebombing like a Stuka.
MAN AND WOMAN
I am afraid that nowadays most people don’t understand the natural differences between the sexes as well as they should. This is why there is so much misunderstanding between men and women, and why men have become so passive and women so aggressive.
Ultimately, no doubt, there is no such thing as gender. In fact I always had the desire to fill a room full of skeletons. One would be lying one atop another as if copulating; one would be holding a skull as if contemplating it, and so on. When anyone came to me to ask about spiritual knowledge I would show them this room. Then I would say, “Do you see those two skeletons over there? That is what you look like when you are making love. There is no gender! Gender was created by Nature for Her own purposes. Copulation is due to rnanubandhana, the bondage of karmic debt.”
As long as we exist in the world we are enmeshed in duality. For worldly purposes we have to consider gender. Until you can go beyond your body completely your gender will exert its effect on you. So I don’t think there is any use in trying to avoid gender differences or pretending they don’t exist. You have to know a thing before you can go beyond it.
Men are creatures of ambition, and women are creatures of emotion. Yes, women can have ambition, and yes, men can have emotion. But only a woman can be overwhelmed by emotion, which is why she can succeed at achieving emotional ecstasies fairly easily. A man must encounter plenty of obstacles before he can enter emotional highlights. He has to work hard to develop such extreme emotion. Of course men are better than women on the path of Jnana, or knowledge. Rarely can a woman develop good Jnana. Why? Because she is the very embodiment of Shakti.
Now I know you can argue that men are also the embodiment of Shakti because the entire manifested universe is nothing but Shakti. But then the entire universe is all the creation of Shiva as well. Both men and women possess attributes of both Shiva and Shakti, but in different measure. The chief characteristic of Shakti is that She is kinetic, She moves. And this is the chief characteristic of a woman, that she is changeable. Some call her fickle. Shiva’s chief characteristic is His immobility. Likewise, a man is, or should be, firm. Often, he is unyielding. Women have to learn firmness; men have to learn emotion. The universe cannot exist if either the male or female principle ceases to exist. There is no way to determine whether men are greater or women are greater. Both of them are, that’s all.
Once the Adya Shakti said to Lord Shiva, “Ha! Who do you think you are? Without me you are nothing!” Shiva smiled his deep, secret smile and said in reply, “Be calm, my dear. Remember, I gave you birth. Your very existence is due to me.”
Consider something else. Women are meant to be more closely bound to the world than are men. Only women can give birth. What is birth? It is the process of taking a spirit and enmeshing it in physical existence. A woman’s job is to clothe spirit in matter. This is why traditionally in Vedic times women were supposed to look after the home and the mundane side of existence while their men went out and did rituals and provided for the family’s spiritual advancement. The man never had to worry about providing for his physical necessities so he would be free to spiritualize himself to the maximum. The woman never had to worry about tough penances and other spiritual practices because whatever penance her man did automatically came in some measure to her. Now things have changed. It is hard for a woman to find a good man, I don’t deny it, and if she can’t find a good man then she has to try to do sadhana on her own; it’s only reasonable. But it is not the ideal situation.
Even physically we can find evidence of this truth. Consider the vagina, a hollow organ. Hollow means empty. A woman has a very basic emptiness which she is always trying to fill and which can best be filled by a man. A man has a solid, firm penis which is always on the lookout for emptiness which can be filled. The vagina is an expansile organ; it can change size to fit any penis. The penis does not change size to fit the vagina, remember; it is the vagina that makes the adjustment and clutches the penis tightly. Just as the proton is enveloped by the “cloud” of electrons which whirl about it, just as Shiva is encompassed by Shakti, even so is a man surrounded by his woman, physically and mentally.
This fact makes women more superficial than men. I know that this statement will offend many self-professed feminists. But look at the vagina again. Is it not superficial to the penis? Does it not cover, as its function? Is not the penis central, the thing covered? Shiva is impulse, Shakti is that which limits the impulse. Is not the limit superficial to the thing limited?
There is nothing wrong per se with being superficial. It has its benefits and drawbacks, like everything else in the universe. If Shakti was not superficial, then Maya, Shakti’s skin, would not exist, and the universe could not hold together. And then none of us would exist. Which is why I worship Ma. But it is necessary to call a spade a spade.
Our Vedic religion made a thorough study of this whole business of male-female duality. Remember, the Vedas never discriminated against women; the discrimination came much later. Many of our great sages were women, like Lopamudra and Gargi. All of our Rishis were married householders. As I said before, in an ideal Vedic marriage the husband exists to provide stability and direction while the wife sees to the details.
In music the rhythm (Shiva) provides the stability, and the tune (Shakti) provides the ornamentation. It is a partnership, a mutual thing: You can’t have one without the other.
Our scriptures describe in detail the qualities of a good wife. When her husband is troubled or tired or fed up with life or needs advice, she is friend, companion, and advisor. In his work she shoulders part of his load, as a servant would; she shares his karmas with him. When she feeds him and cares for him when he is ill, a wife must mother her husband. And finally, “Shayaneshu Rambha”: in bed she should be as passionate as Rambha, the most sensuous of the dancing girls in the court of Indra (king of the gods). In fact she has the right to demand that her husband satisfy her sexually.
Most important, a good wife will always encourage her man to do his sadhana, since he is doing it for her also: They have become two parts of the same being. Never forget that sadhana is possible only when your domestic life is stable. As the great saint Tukaram said, “Pahile Pothoba, nantar Vithoba,” meaning that you should first make sure that your belly has been satisfied and only then think about going out to search for God.
If a man and a woman can cooperate like this then the sky is the limit for what they can achieve together. I once told this to an American couple whom I treat as my spiritual children. The lady told me, “This is all about a good wife. Didn’t anyone in India ever bother to consider what makes a good husband?” She was right, of course; she had every right to demand to know. I told her, “A good husband does all he can to satisfy his wife’s desires, beginning with sex. He must not fail to satiate her with sex. Our ancient scriptures even mention this.” In one of them, Parvati, Shiva’s wife, says, “Among all the pleasures of women the greatest pleasure is to unite with a good man in private, and the misery which arises from its interruption is not equalled by any other.”
A man’s enjoyment in sex and in family life in general is meant to consist of the satisfaction he obtains from being able to satisfy his family’s desires. If his woman is a good wife all her desires will benefit him directly or indirectly anyway, so he is not losing anything. It is a mutual benefit, an attempt on the part of both to do the best they can for each other.
Of course, nowadays such well-balanced couples are so rare as to be almost nonexistent, and this is all because men and women no longer know who they are and what they are supposed to do. Every woman has within her a measure of the original Shakti but very few women know their own capabilities, all because of the heavy overlay of karmas which obscures their perception. A woman who learns her capabilities as an embodied Shakti, well, she becomes someone. And this goes for men, too. Deep down inside they have a spark of the divine Shiva. Unfortunately most humans perceive things so dimly that women interpret the Shakti they feel as a need to smother their men, and men feel just sufficient force of Shiva to make them think they need to dominate women without knowing how to control them. Control of a woman can never be by force, which produces too many deleterious effects. Control must always be by love alone if it is to be effective. How many men know how to control a woman today? Even a handful? Ha!
Remember, always remember, that just because Nature wants men to control women that no one should ever think that women are in any way inferior to men. Never! They are just different, and it is not enough for a man to say to himself, “Men are supposed to control women,” and then proceed to beat his wife, physically or mentally, if she refuses to indulge his whimsicalness. Women are different from men emotionally, and they have their own advantages which men cannot claim. For example, once a woman decides to do something and sets her mind to it no force can dissuade her. Once an object is electrified the electricity never leaves on its own; it must be drawn away. This explains why women are more passionate than men: They abandon themselves to their passion, they lose themselves in it.
This is why I am never bothered when I find a spiritual aspirant who is obsessed with sex. It is a good sign. Once you can transfer that obsession to a deity it will always pay dividends. After all, sex is just an attempt to return to the state of primordial unity; it is just misdirected. Once such aspirants are given the proper direction they can achieve very quickly, in a blitzkrieg.
I have told you stories about Tulsidas. Did you know that sex made him renounce the world? It happened this way. When he was a young man he married a young beauty named Ratnavali, and he went mad with lust for her. He couldn’t sleep at night unless he had slaked his lust with her at least once. She enjoyed this in the beginning, of course, but eventually she became tired of it and one day decided to take a break. She told him that she had to consider her obligations to her family and so needed to make a social call on her mother and sister for a day and a night. She left.
That night Tulsidas found himself unable to sleep without his usual sexual release. It did not take him long to become frantic with desire, and in the course of the night he determined that he must have Ratnavali or he would surely die.
The night was dark. Rain cascaded down onto the insatiable Tulsidas as he careened through the town’s muddied streets. Ratnavali’s family lived across the river from Tulsidas, and the swollen torrent of the stream temporarily stopped his progress as he feverishly considered ways to cross over.
It so happened that a corpse lay there on the riverbank waiting to be cremated. The rain had set in before its pyre could be built, and the mourners had had to run to shelter to await a drier moment to perform their duty to the deceased. Tulsidas’s desperate brain saw the corpse as a suitable raft on which to cross the river, failing to register that it was indeed a dead body. Overjoyed at his good fortune Tulsidas dragged his “raft” into the water and begin wild paddling for the opposite shore.
Once on the bank he leapt ashore and flew toward Ratnavali’s house. It was lightless with midnight. Knowing Ratnavali’s room to be on the top floor, he grabbed a handy rope, knotted one end into a lasso, and looped it over an obliging tree branch, entirely oblivious to the fact that the rope was not a rope but rather a large, very venomous, and thoroughly astonished snake.
Into Ratnavali’s room Tulsidas catapulted. Embracing her out of her sleep he had his way with her over her shame-filled protests that her mother and sister would hear. Spent, he lay back exhausted, soaking her bed.
She spat at him disgustedly, “Tulsidas, you came to me only to satisfy your lust. You crave my flesh and bones. If you had put as much emotion into worshipping Lord Rama as you have in longing for this impermanent body of mine, just think of what heights you could have reached by now.”
This barb embedded itself deeply in poor Tulsidas. All his sweet intoxication of passion and satiation evaporated instantly, and he replied, “Oh, is that so? Well, I’ll show you!” He left, noting in passing the corpse and the snake, amazed at the blindness which sex had engendered in him. He left his own home and wandered the world as a sadhu. He searched and searched and eventually found Rama.
And Ratnavali? She was as good as a widow after that. She helped her husband attain God and ruined her marriage in the bargain. She did not meet Tulsidas for several years. Once she finally located him he told her, “You are my first guru. I must always respect you for pushing me onto the path that led to Rama. But now I have greater happiness with my Rama than I had with you. So please go back to your mother and sister.”
Here is a wonderful example of a lost opportunity. If Ratnavali had had subtle intelligence she would have converted her husband’s sexual energy into love for God by always seeing him as Shiva and always imagining herself to be Parvati. She would still have been his guru, fulfilling that rnanubandhana, and he would still have achieved, perhaps after a longer time, but then both would have achieved, and what love they would have had for each other! But by being insulting she lost everything. That’s why I always say that the tongue and the penis can lift you to the heights or drag you down to the depths. It all depends on how you use them.
THE NATURE OF SEX
Why do people enjoy sex so much? It’s such a filthy activity, putting flesh into flesh, lying in a pool of sweat, oozings, and discharges. Modern people explain it by saying this is the way Nature ensures the survival of the species, but that is not an explanation. It is merely a restatement of the problem: How does Nature overcome individuals with the desire to mate?
Consider this: The ultimate foundation of all interpersonal relationships is cuddling and fondling. When a child is born its parents cuddle and fondle it, creating in it the feeling that it is loved. When the child is older it develops an attachment for a member of the opposite sex, which progresses from cuddling to fondling and culminates in the sex act.
After marriage some of the mystique of the romance between the two partners disappears. The solution? Produce a child which the couple can cuddle and fondle. Once the child is grown and married the couple will have their grandchildren to cuddle and fondle. All throughout life there is nothing but this.
When a man and a woman love each other they always try to get closer and closer to one another. Separation is always painful, and they try to avoid it by spending all their free time together. This is why the word “couple” is singular in English even though it means two. This feeling of separation is possible only because there is duality; the misery of separation is the misery of being unable to make the two, which were originally one, into one again. In the primal condition there was no male and no female.
When a man and a woman are really deeply in love, when the emotion is so strong that they are always mentally close, daydreaming about each other, imagining the next rendezvous, there comes a time when they can no longer resist the urge to be physically close, to unite sexually. The tension builds up to the point where release is inevitable. It is a question of possession: “I want to become you, and I want you to become me.” This is impossible; the bodies get in the way. The next best thing is, “I should be in you and you should be in me.” When the couple is overwhelmed by the imperative to unite, they have sex. Actually only the penis and vagina unite, but for the duration of the sex act the man feels, “Yes, I have penetrated her, I have possessed her,” and the woman feels, “Yes, I have accepted him into me, I have possessed him.”
I have always said that women are more possessive than are men, and that 99.99 percent of women are possessive. And whenever I say this some woman objects. But look at physiology again! The vagina accepts the penis, not vice versa. The female is meant to possess, and the male is meant to feel that he is being possessed. Nowadays, of course, when everything is so topsy-turvy many men have become possessive, but this is pathological; it only happens because they are unsure of their own masculinity. Men are very worried about their sexual performance, their ability to make a woman feel that she is “full.” This fear of inadequacy makes them fear that their partners will have to go to other men to become satisfied, and they defend themselves by becoming possessive.
But that is abnormal. It is normal for a woman to be somewhat possessive, and only the greatest women can go beyond it, just as only the greatest men can go beyond their image of themselves as great stud bulls who women are supposed to want to possess. Then of course you have Freud, who claimed that everything was due to penis envy, but that is another matter. Right now let us consider the sex act.
When the penis and the vagina unite there is a great satisfaction in both partners; possession, partial unity, has taken place. This partial unity overwhelms them with the desire to attain to perfect unity, and they attempt to move their bodies even closer together until their nervous systems overload and orgasm occurs. During the moment of orgasm the two forget entirely their earthly existence, and for a brief moment — a very brief moment — they are again one. But only for the time the orgasm lasts. Afterward they are again separate.
Most people try to convince themselves that they are satisfied with orgasmic sex, but they cannot. Even if you enjoy sex with real concentration, with real cooperation between the partners, the satiation will last for a week or two at the most, and then the desire will again arise. Of course if you are chasing sex for the orgasm alone and not for the love, you will not be satiated even by copulating ten times a day. You will end up a pervert; there is no escape. Orgasm is just a physical reflex; it causes no satisfaction on its own, just “tension release.” To really enjoy an orgasm you must enjoy your partner. You must love your partner sincerely, and you must be more interested in his or her gratification than in your own.
With ordinary sex between two partners who are fully receptive to each other’s needs, satiation can’t last more than two weeks. But with Vajroli (see in Chap. 9) a couple can enjoy themselves so fully in one sexual experience that for three months or more the sexual urge never rears its head. They feel so close to one another that there is just no need for the temporary closeness provided by an orgasm. There is real beauty in such a relationship. This is what the West has yet to learn: Sex is something which deserves a lot of time and effort to perfect, to make the effect unique and lasting.
How many people in the world really know about sex? Oh I know, there are Masters and Johnson and so many other sexologists and dozens of books on the subject, but how many people have really become experts at sex? We Indians, only a few of us, are the only ones in the world who really know the spiritual erotic art. Westerners are doing plenty of research but they have a long, long way to go. If they were to learn our techniques they would be able to perform them very well, because they are willing to try anything new. They have very few inhibitions left, in contrast to today’s Indians who have plenty.
But there is such a difference in the mentality of a Westerner and an Easterner! And sex is all in the mind, no matter what anyone tells you. Take prostitution as an example. A Western whore watches the clock very closely. Once your time is up you must emit and depart. But here in India suppose you try to climb on the lady too early. She will tell you, “No, my lord, wait, the night is yet young, we have until morning to enjoy our play.” If you fart in the bed of a Western whore she will say, “Oh, you bloody stinking fellow!” But an Indian girl would tell you, “What a man you are! Even the gas you pass is melodious!” Of course this is the way things used to be; Indians are gradually becoming clock-watchers under the influence of the West.
Don’t you think a man is more likely to perform well in response to a supportive and caring attitude rather than one which is strictly businesslike? I don’t mean to say that Indian prostitutes have hearts of gold; far from it. They put on this act because they know it will help generate more revenue from the customer. Here in India both get what they want: The man thinks he is being treated like a lord, and the lady gets paid for having a good time. And in the West? Only business. We Indians are very emotional and to trick us you have only to play on our emotions.
Westerners have become very clinical on the subject of sex. I read in Time magazine the review of a book written about the clitoris. Very nice, but inexact. Very few people in the world understand women’s orgasms, and in the East only about 1/10 of 1 percent of women have any idea of what an orgasm is. In the West at least 10 percent do because they all read the sex manuals and try out what they read, but they are still groping, they don’t have a complete grasp of the subject. To begin with they should forget all about quantity and should concentrate on quality; one good orgasm satisfying to both partners is worth a hundred ordinary physical responses. For this they must try to understand the true nature of sex.
THE RNANUBANDHANA OF SEX
In reality there is nothing to sex but rnanubandhana. Freud was right to argue that the sex instinct is inherent in all creatures, inborn in each one. But did he know why? Did he know that the sex instinct actually begins with the union of the sperm and ovum, because that is a sex act all its own, a union of male and female? Sexuality begins with conception, and as soon as the child is born it is aware of its sexuality. Doesn’t the penis of a tiny infant become erect? Since erection occurs only when the ego self-identifies with the penis, ego awareness of sexuality must be present even in infancy.
Two people can be mutually attracted to one another only if there was some relationship between them in a previous life. They may have been animals or insects or humans, but if they copulated then they will be overwhelmed by the urge to copulate when they meet in this life. And just because they were mates or husband and wife in a previous existence it does not always happen that they must be husband and wife in this life. They may come back as mother and son, father and daughter, or brother and sister; and then the result will be incest. In the past these instincts were rigidly controlled by the rules of society, and those cases of incest which did occur were hidden deep. Today everything is out in the open.
Now, the person of subtle intelligence will be able to discover so many things about two people who copulate. For one, suppose it is a mother and her son who unite sexually. Does the mother make the son climb on her or is it the son who initiates the activity? By knowing this you can know who was the male in the last encounter, in the last birth. Normally, the male is dominant. He first indicates his desire for sex, and then the female acquiesces. She will acquiesce only if there was a relationship between them in the past. She will be overcome by the urge developed during that previous liaison. If the female in this birth takes the initiative, she must have been the male previously.
Even the posture taken during coitus is determined by that previous relationship. You know, I suppose, that camels and rhinos mate hindways; the penis points backward in these species. Each species has its own peculiarities of mating, and if you know all the possible wombs, like a Rishi does, the sex posture alone is sufficient to pinpoint the species involved in the previous relationship.
This knowledge can be beneficial. Suppose I have knowledge of my previous births. I meet a girl I like and we go to bed together. Since I know the form we shared previously — fish, bird, mammal, or whatever — I will refer to my mental files and locate the sex techniques appropriate to that species and then deliberately initiate that technique. She and I will then instinctively enjoy that sex much more than we would have, had we used any other posture, because subconsciously we go back to our previous state, which makes the conscious mind drop away, which increases the passion. That sex will be so satisfying that the rnanubandhana is fulfilled completely by one session. My work is done; another rna is crossed off my list. The girl enjoys herself better than she has ever enjoyed before. No one is a loser. This is especially important because, as a male, I have the obligation to satiate my partner.
To know the rnanubandhana is to be able to decide how and when to fulfill it. If I know Shiva Svarodaya, the science of breath, I can deliberately inhale certain of my partner’s breaths during a deep embrace, and she will never be able to leave me. When I know the rnanubandhana is finished and it is time for our relationship to end, I will inhale certain other breaths and she will develop an aversion for me and we will split; it’s as simple as that. She never knows what has happened. She thinks it is all her own volition that she came to me and that she left. She forgets that there is no such thing as free wlll.
There comes a point, though, when sex becomes tiresome. How much can you perform the sex act, anyway? You have to tire of it eventually. Suppose that a certain couple had enjoyed sex so much in a past birth that they were fully satiated. When they meet in this birth they will have a desire for sex but they will never be impelled to follow through on that desire. They must have a desire for sex together because they were related sexually in the past; it is axiomatic. But if they avoid sex in this birth their relationship will become much more intense.
Physical sex makes you more aware of your body, which weakens your mind. This makes you more interested in gratifying your body and makes it less likely that you’ll remain faithful to one partner. When your relationship is purely or predominantly mental though, there comes a point when you will be unable to do without your partner, the ties will be so strong. You’ll never be tempted to look at anyone else because you know you’ll never find anyone else to understand you so well. A peculiar sort of Maya will bond the two of you together. Whenever you are apart you will always long for the day when you will be reunited; you yearn for each other, to share your professions, your hobbies, your pastimes, and, most of all, your sadhana. There is such a beautiful lingering memory that you can’t bear separation, but there is almost no desire for sex because just a kiss or a hug or the touch of a hand is enough to satisfy. Isn’t this better than repetitively going through the moanings and groanings of physical sex? Isn’t this more refined?
Like music sex is an art, and you must be artistic if you hope to become good at sex. Everything in life should be artistic, in my opinion; otherwise, what is the use of living? This is the main grudge I have against Westerners: They are so crude and rough. It is because they are slaves to time, always in such a hurry to get things done that they rarely have time to do anything right, with art, grace, and culture. And now the Westerners are spreading this disease all around the world.
There has never been any other lover in the world like Lord Krishna, and there will never again be another like Him. He had more than 16,000 wives, and every woman who saw Him immediately fell in love with Him and melted into Him. When He lived among the cowherds of Brindavan He used to dance with the women of the village the dance known as the Ras-Lila. There is an esoteric meaning for this and every other event in Krishna’s life, of course, but besides that, an imitation of the Ras-Lila has been performed as a folk dance for millennia here in India. A boy and a girl stand opposite one another, each holding a pair of slim sticks. They wheel and whirl, tapping their sticks together to the rhythm of the dance. Most intricate; fascinating to watch. But now the vulgar have made the music disco, and the children beat their sticks together violently. The last time I encouraged Ravi to join in I thought he would be beaten soundly by the girl he was dancing with! She was that rough.
Our society is regressing into barbarism; it’s sad. Is it any wonder that people have no time or interest for mere kissing and holding hands or lying together quietly side by side? Such development in a couple occurs only after many lives lived together. Today, people will not settle for anything less than sex, usually rough and violent sex, and even that fails to satisfy them.
MARRIAGE
Most people cannot get out of the rnanubandhana of sex, which is why society developed the institution of marriage. Originally, there was no such system as marriage here in India. People were more primitive, something like cavemen. If I wanted some woman I would just go and take her, and no one could say anything about it. Swetaketu changed all that.
One day Swetaketu, his father, Uddalaka Rishi, and his mother were all sitting peacefully near their hut. A Brahmana walked up to his mother, said “Come with me!” and carried her away. Swetaketu wanted to follow him and bring his mother back, but his father dissuaded him gently, saying, “Someday you will steal someone’s wife yourself.” Then Swetaketu’s young heart was so hurt that he vowed he would change society so that no children would ever again be so cavalierly deprived of their mothers. And so marriage came into being.
Still, the ancient sacrament of marriage was nothing like what we have today. Back then if a boy and girl decided to marry they would go out alone together to a secluded place and would take the sun, or the fire, the water or another of the Great Elements as a witness, and that was it. From that time forth they were man and wife. Plenty of rituals were added later by the priestly class to prolong the ceremony for the priests’ benefit, but the essence of the rite is still the same. Every Vedic wedding today takes fire as a witness, because no marriage is regarded as irrevocably solemnized until the couple takes seven steps around the sacred fire.
The true Vedics never consummated a marriage the day it took place no matter how auspicious the wedding day might be. The bride would return home with her parents to wait for another auspicious day, so chosen that by copulating on that day the couple would achieve such satisfaction that they would never think of leaving each other. Another advantage to the wait between the ceremony and the consummation was that both parties had time to prepare themselves mentally. The days they spent apart served to heighten their desire for each other, from anticipation of the sex they would enjoy together. I have always said that 50 percent of the enjoyment of a romance lies in the waiting period, when you don’t know whether the opposite party will fall in love with you or not. You can’t be sure, you can’t take anything for granted, you are on tenterhooks continuously. After you both know you love each other, part of the joy is lost, but part still remains: “If I make a mistake he (or she) might leave me.” This keeps you always on your best behavior.
But after marriage you know you always have each other, you have ready sex whenever you want it, and your partner dare not leave you since society will point a finger if he or she does. The result? All the magic, the mystery, the danger disappears from the relationship; it becomes devitalized. And then there is nothing to do but endure it, or if you are an American, divorce.
In India we have known about human psychology for a long time, and this wait before the bride is taken to her husband’s house is one means of making the marriage a success. Each day the longing would increase until both bride and groom would be half-mad with desire by the time the auspicious day rolled around. Then the bride would be decked out in a beautiful sari and whatnot and would travel by stages to her husband’s house. With her she would carry a big silver glass filled with milk: two liters boiled down into one, mixed with almonds, pistachios, saffron, and so on. She would also bring five paans. Each paan would have extra ingredients added to it, and each would be folded into a particular shape.
After all the greetings and other formalities, which would be suitably prolonged to drive the newlyweds to distraction, the bride and groom would enter their nuptial chamber, and no one would disturb them until they emerged.
The first paan would be square-folded. Both would eat it together so their lips would meet in a kiss. That kiss, the first kiss of passion in their lives, would be prolonged, and when the young man would then look at his wife’s lips he would see them blood-red because of the paan juice. And you know what red is to a bull: it intoxicates, excites him.
People talk about kissing but they don’t have any idea about how many types of kisses there are. Let me tell you about just three of them. The kiss of entanglement is a kiss on the lips, which is practiced by lovers or by husband and wife. It entangles you further and further in the Maya of sex. The satanic kiss is a kiss on the eyes by a Dakini or a Pishacha. This kiss makes you see the ethereal world, which will in all probability drive you insane; that is why it is satanic. When Ma kisses you, though, She will kiss you on your forehead at the location of your third eye, which She causes to open. This is the kiss of enlightenment, the kiss of true Motherhood, and the day Ma gives you this kiss you become filled with Her Divine Intelligence. I think this is the best type of kiss, and after enjoying it I never feel like enjoying any other type of kiss. I want only Her sweet lips.
But most human beings insist on fleshly lips. Most human beings, unfortunately, have become so obsessed with sex that they have forgotten the beauty of a kiss. Forget coitus; once you have kissed someone, once you have come so close to another being as to unite your mouths together, how can you forget that person? Isn’t sex just the uniting of the lower mouths together? When someone has so totally surrendered to you as to open his or her body to you, shouldn’t you always remember that surrender? Most people don’t, though; they enjoy and forget. It just goes to show that all sex today is directed solely by rnanubandhana. Traditionally, though, a couple would experience a romantic kiss first on that night of consummation, and it would be the experience of a lifetime for them.
The second paan was to be placed between the girl’s breasts. The boy would take it with his mouth, using his tongue to clean and excite the area, thus igniting the erotic centers of the upper body. Remember how the ancient Romans in their orgies used to pour wine over the women’s breasts and then lick it up? This is the same sort of thing.
The third paan was to be folded flat and placed at the navel, a very important erotic center. Here the boy was not to use his tongue, only his lips. The erotic centers ignited above should now be truly inflamed.
The fourth paan was to be folded conically and placed in the vagina. As the young man bit it the conical tip would pierce the hymen. By this time the bride should be experiencing uncontrollable spasms. The boy would then mount her and discharge. If they knew Vajroli, of course, there would be no discharge; he would make her have so many orgasms that she would be satiated for a full three months. In any event after coitus they would both share the fifth paan, kissing again, and then they would drink the milk. Ayurveda says, “After food drink buttermilk, and after sex drink hot milk” The milk strengthened and invigorated them for further play.
At Indian marriage ceremonies a round fruit which looks something like a walnut and is called a Madanaphala is tied around the groom’s wrist. Most people today don’t bother to search for the real thing and tie any convenient root or fruit instead, and even the people who tie the real Madanaphala don’t know what it is meant for. Madana is one of the names of the god of love, and Madanaphala is one of the best of aphrodisiacs. It is tied around the groom’s wrist for the bride’s benefit. Should he ever become impotent she would take that fruit which he had worn at the wedding, to which a small ritual had been done, and would administer it to him after preparing it in the prescribed way. Then he would again be able to perform his sexual duty to her. This was another of the customs propounded by our Rishis for the preservation of family and society, but as our society declines this knowledge is being lost.
Circumstances today just don’t permit most people ever to have satisfactory sex. In the West no one allows themselves the time; as I’ve said, they are all clock-watchers. In India we have plenty of time but no privacy. The Indian couple is always afraid that auntie or little brother may be watching, spying on them. This destroys the mood. Sex being all in the mind, what is the use in indulging in it without the proper mood? Another reason I am not in favor of today’s sort of marriage is that it ruins sex. Marriage has become licensed prostitution. Neither the man nor his wife is legally permitted to enjoy with anyone else, so there is no incentive to gratify the partner. Everything regresses to self-gratification.
For years and years the priests burned widows alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres, claiming that by doing so the women would become Sati. Nothing could be more ridiculous. If a man and a woman are deeply in love the one will not be able to last once the other dies; the longing is just too strong. My own father lived only a couple of years after the death of my mother; and during that period we would often find him sitting apart, wiping the tears from his eyes. A woman who finds herself bereft of her husband who she truly loved as her god incarnate will not find any further interest in life and will die. She may not throw herself on the pyre; she may starve herself or just waste away, but she will quit living. She is Sati; she has gone beyond rna and will meet her man again in future births. As long as you are restricted by rna you have no free will; only when the limitation of rna is broken can you become Sati.
A woman who is not so attached to her husband will not bother too much about his death. She will continue living; she might marry again. The rnanubandhana between her and her former husband is broken. They will no longer be born together but will go their separate ways. The same goes for a man whose wife dies and who then forgets her. These are not true marriages, only arrangements for the fulfillment of rnanubandhana. I say, why bother with marriage at all? It is no longer necessary to marry to enjoy sex; people enjoy more or less as they please nowadays. The only other use of marriage is to make the children you produce legitimate in the eyes of the law. This is convenient but is not an insurmountable difficulty if you prefer otherwise; many famous men and women were illegitimate. Why bother to marry and create complications for yourself?
CREATION AND PROCREATION
Human beings like to procreate, to reproduce their own kind. If they could learn to create there is no limit to what they could achieve. But you have to give up procreation before you can begin to create, and few, very few, are willing to do that.
Let me try to explain the difference between creation and procreation. It’s really all in the point of view. Ordinary men and women treat Nature as something external to them. They talk about Nature procreating because they see the continuous birth and death of the samsara surrounding them. Because of ignorance they conveniently forget that they too are part of the copulating game, insignificant worms in the samsara themselves. They self-identify with their own limited bodies and personalities. This puts them under the control of Nature, and they are not even aware of it; they remain subject to the Law of Karma and to rebirth.
If they could go beyond their limitations they could actually see that Nature is really doing the creating. Nature has control over the patterns that manifest, and all the reproduction in the world is just the natural outcome of the impulse of Nature. Therefore, it is Nature who creates, and ordinary mortals who procreate.
Humans think it is the other way around, out of ignorance. They believe that through sex they are creating a child. Why should they want a child? They just want someone to reproduce their own attributes, someone who will appreciate and love them. Just as Shiva and Shakti generate universes in which beings can, by means of hard penances, come to the stage of admiring and loving the Father and Mother of the cosmos, a man and a woman produce a child in the expectation of receiving love and admiration from it. But this is really procreation because they are unaware of the rnanubandhana, the impulse which impels them to do it. Real creation becomes possible only when they become aware of that impulse and transcend it. However, if everyone realized all at once their true selves then there would be no one to fall prey to Maya and continue to ride the wheel of birth and death. Nature, therefore, keeps almost everyone in ignorance. Isn’t it wonderful?
Conception is in itself a wonderful process. All the sperm have the same determination: “I must go through the cervix to the uterus, get into the tube, locate the ovum, and unite with it.” The ovum is single and passive; it doesn’t have to search for the sperm. The sperm have to swim hard against the current, and, of the millions ejaculated, only one is finally accepted by the egg. What can we learn from this?
First, the male should always be the active partner and the female the passive partner in the sex act. This is Nature’s way, as exemplified in the physical process of sex. A man will never be able to penetrate if he cannot maintain an erection, and even after penetration he must make movements. The woman needs to do nothing but lie still and allow it to happen. She can cooperate if she pleases, but it is not at all necessary.
One of the problems with Westerners today is that some women are attempting to become the aggressive factor in the relationship. As I mentioned before, this is because they were males in their previous existences, and their present male partners were the females then. Although it is easy to give in to these past tendencies it is better to resist them and to learn the gender roles appropriate for your sex this time around. The male is meant to be dominant because Shiva must always control Shakti. This is why the male should be on top during copulation and why the woman must be beneath him. Shiva must be on top to control. If the woman is on top Shakti is in control, but Shakti knows no control. The result? The male might become a pervert, because the free-flowing Shakti will cause his perverted karmas to emanate from the causal body. The idea that the woman should actively climb on top of the man is completely against Nature. What happens during Vajroli is different, of course.
Second, only that sperm which will provide the specific heredity required by the spirit who is to take birth will be selected by the egg. The sperm having the strongest rnanubandhana with the ovum is always the winner. If the child is meant to be born blind or deformed or mentally retarded, only that spermatozoon which fits the bill in its entirety will make it to the egg.
“Gahana karmano gatih”: The ways of karma are profoundly deep. Sometimes even when there are plenty of sperm they run into a “No Vacancy” sign when they try to meet the egg. If there is no Jiva with sufficient rnanubandhana or if the horoscope which would result will not fit the requirements of the Jiva or if there is some curse, you may pour in liters of semen and still conception will not occur.
If there is enough rnanubandhana to attract some Jiva then that disembodied spirit will impel the sperm and ovum to meet. When they unite the two become one; duality is ended. But this unity, like the unity of orgasm, is very temporary. Because of the overwhelming joy of the union the sperm and ovum procreate and form billions of cells. As the zygote begins to divide, duality begins again.
Until the heart starts to beat the Jiva is in a state of bliss, at one with Krishna, in a state of union with the Absolute. Once the heart starts to beat personalized existence begins, separation from the Beloved. The Jiva really begins to self-identify with the fetus only after the heart starts to beat. The Jiva enters the zygote at the moment of conception, to be sure; otherwise growth and movement would never occur. We say, though, that life really begins in the fourth month, and after the seventh month the Jiva has a firm grip on the fetus because it is then that the fetus becomes viable if premature labor occurs.
The Jiva in the womb has a memory of past lives. This explains why the fetus kicks and moves about: It recalls its past freedom and resents being trapped in a cramped womb, surrounded by hot, fetid intestines, tortured by the spicy food, intoxicants, and other inappropriate things its mother indulges in. The subtle body completely self-identifies with the fetus and enjoys the placental food. Despite the torments of living in its own waste products it never wants to leave the womb, because it remembers its past lives and comprehends the mistakes it has made. It promises God that if it is permitted to remain in the womb indefinitely it will worship with concerted mind.
At the moment of birth, though, the fetus is cut off from the placenta. Because it craves food it projects its mind outward — and forgets its past lives. When its head is squeezed coming through the birth canal it forgets everything and comes into the world screaming, “Koham? Koham? (Who am I? Who am I?)” Some hear in its cries “Uma! Uma!” Uma is one of the names of Shiva’s wife, Parvati. By crying “Uma!” Shakti is calling, “I am here!”
The embryo or fetus is the characteristic of Maya. At the time of birth the fetus forgets all the promises it has made to God about what it will do after its birth because the mother and father were copulating only for pleasure, not to have a child. Even in those couples whose aim was to procreate, the last moments of coitus produce such great passion that they forget everything except the bliss of sex, and this is what makes the child forgetful as it is born. Out of a million cases maybe one couple will unite for the specific purpose of producing progeny and will keep that determination even through the orgasm. That child will remain fuzzily aware of his past existence: He will have a sort of ESP.
Why should a guru call the disciples who come to him “children”? Because in a very real way he is creating them, though not through the usual method of procreation. He is not interested in the body at all, only in what is within the body.
Jesus said, “You must be born again.” He meant that you must be given a new birth by your guru. The guru must recreate you after first destroying you. Your ordinary physical birth pushes your face into the slush of the samsara. The guru gives you a new birth which takes you out of the world.
Doesn’t it make sense then for an Aghori to die to the world? Once you are dead you can be easily reborn, and this time with full consciousness of who you are. When a guru “mates” with his Shakti to create a disciple, he does it not for pleasure but to fulfill a specific purpose. Such a “child” is bound to be clairaudient and clairvoyant, isn’t he?
This is why a true guru will always be celibate. He is not interested in using his semen for mere procreation; he preserves it for something better. Today everyone pooh-poohs this idea. They say, “Semen is only a natural product. There is no harm in evicting it as much as you like.” In fact, I was told that one theory making the rounds in America now is that if a man does not ejaculate at least once every forty-eight hours that he runs the risk of enlargement of the prostate! How absurd! What rubbish! The fact is, too much emission of semen is much more likely to cause prostate enlargement in old age than is too little ejaculation.
OJAS
For creation you must use the semen in a different way than the way you use it for procreation. Semen is that substance in the male body which has the ability to create. Only procreation is possible if it is expelled from the body, ejaculated during the sex act. If it is retained within the body, stored instead of being wasted, then real creation becomes possible through ojas. Ojas is the source of the body’s metabolic energy, the Jathara Agni. Loss of semen means loss of ojas and thus loss of digestive power. Ayurveda cautions that all diseases result from disturbed digestion, which explains why Ayurveda always also cautions that the wise man should preserve his semen.
It is said in Ayurveda that ojas is derived from semen, but this is not quite so. Ojas exists in association with the head and the nervous system. In fact the “aura” or “halo” which you can see around a person’s head is composed of his or her ojas. When I say that loss of semen causes loss of ojas you must remember that sex is all in the mind. Before the penis surges into erection there must be a mental command for it to do so. When thoughts of sex fill the mind the Kama Agni (Fire of Lust) becomes inflamed. Heat is anathema to ojas. The Kama Agni causes a disturbance in the ojas, which alters the brain chemistry and directs the endocrine glands to begin to secrete. The effect is first felt on the prostate in men and the Bartholin’s gland in women. Whenever oozing from these glands occurs you can be sure that ojas is being dissipated. During celibacy the ojas goes on and on harmonizing itself.
Women are lucky in that every month all the filth in their blood is drained out. This is the function of menstruation, and each menstrual cycle strengthens a woman’s ojas because there is less waste material in the body to disturb digestion or brain chemistry. Unfortunately, since women are nine times more passionate than men most of them will find that this increased ojas merely serves to increase their sex drive. They will be impelled to copulate more, and all the benefits will be lost. Ayurveda recognizes that the same substances which rejuvenate the body also act as aphrodisiacs and warns that when a rejuvenating effect is desired, sex must be restricted.
Ordinary sexual activity destroys ojas, but so do thoughts of sex and sexual fantasies even if you do not act on them. In fact continual brooding about anything is equally devastating to the ojas because thought causes the mind and brain to heat up and all this mental heat, no matter what the cause, causes excessive physical heat. According to Ayurveda excess heat in the body leads to constipation, the root of most diseases. Heat also causes hypersecretion of all the glands, which in turn excites the mind via the body. It’s a vicious cycle. Excess coolness in the body can be readily dealt with; excess heat is dangerous. Any unnatural heat ruins the ojas just as surely as does an inflamed Kama Agni.
Likewise, harmonious thoughts increase ojas. How often have you heard someone say to a pregnant woman, “What a glow you have about your face!” That glow is the aura, composed of ojas. You might think that a pregnant woman’s ojas would be low because her body tissues are being depleted to furnish nutrients for the baby. But because of the emotions of motherhood, the overwhelming love for the child being formed, ojas actually increases.
CONSERVATION
If you want to progress from the state of being a donkey in human form, one who lives for eating and procreating, to a higher state, you must conserve your semen. If you are female you must preserve the vaginal secretions which pour out during excitement and sex. The need for celibacy is the same in both sexes. There are dozens of good reasons for Brahmacharya (celibacy), but we will consider just a few.
First, Newton’s Law of Motion: Action and reaction are equal and opposite. When a man indulges in too much sex or masturbation he kills millions upon millions of sperm. He gets a little thrill out of it, but he must reproduce all those living beings again within his body. Celibacy is not meant to remove all pleasure from life; it is meant to avoid killing sperm, among other things. After such an overindulgent man has died isn’t Nature right to make him be born as a spermatozoon for at least seven births? Then he learns what it is like to be wasted: living quietly in the body, a brief moment of joy, freedom, and — finished. And such a man will continue to be reborn as a sperm until he can locate an ovum with which he has some rnanubandhana. You see, hells are not imaginary. Some of them exist outside the earth but many exist right here. It’s just that we can’t see them easily. When you become aware of the real significance of, say, Kumbhipaka, the hell in which you are born and reborn as a spermatozoon, well, then you will say, “Oh, yes, now I realize….”
Second, if you are not interested in sex then it will be impossible for any voluptuous, passionate young woman to entrap you, or if you are female for any man to sweet-talk you. Since you have nothing physical to take from anyone you will never have to subject yourself to scheming lovers and succumb to their wiles. The more you indulge in sex the more your mind becomes attached to it. This makes it far easier for someone, human or spirit, to use sex as a bait to hook you. Abstinence, Brahmacharya, is safer.
Third, Brahmacharya makes your nerves very strong. Sex is a nervous response of the body. The more you enervate your body the more mentally unstable or “infirm” do you become. You can’t afford to have weak nerves if you want to perform Aghora sadhanas because the first wild shrieking spirit who comes along will reduce you to a gibbering wreck, or will give you such a rude shock that your nervous system will collapse and you’ll die of heart failure. Or, if your guru wanted to give you some of his Shakti, your nervous system might not be able to take it, in which case you would run amok.
Fourth, the body’s Agni controls not only the body’s digestion but also that of the mind, which has to digest all the new things it learns every day. Loss of semen causes loss of ojas which dulls the mental digestion, which is especially bad for spiritual aspirants, who must develop subtle perception.
Fifth, the physical pleasure of sex arises from the stimulation of nerves in the genitals, resulting from the friction caused by the movements of the penis in the vagina or anus. Our ancient Indian scientists knew the value of the anus as an erotic center, mind you. Be it vagina, anus, or mouth, the friction produces heat, which destabilizes the mind. The more you copulate the less firm will be your mind. As I’ve noted, firmness of mind is especially essential in Aghora.
Sixth, years of Brahmacharya will develop great strength of ojas. Your aura or halo will develop to such an extent that whoever meets you will feel refreshed and relieved afterward. The ojas will harmonize both you and those around you. This is the hallmark of a real saint, the test you can use to separate the men from the donkeys.
Finally, copulation causes a disturbance in the Ether Element because of the friction vibrations and the queer thoughts which are engendered in you as a result. These sex vibrations are tremendously irritating to deities and other high ethereal beings. Since most sadhanas involve the attraction of an ethereal being to you, sex is contraindicated in sadhana, absolutely. I once made the mistake of teaching a Ganesh Mantra to a man who could not control himself. He remained celibate for almost three months and then just when he was about to achieve, he decided he had to have some sex. He went in to his wife, who unsuccessfully tried to prevent him from sleeping with her. After enjoying himself twice he went to sleep. In a dream he saw an enraged elephant chasing him and giving him a good slap with its trunk. The next morning his face was swollen to twice its normal size. He was removed to the hospital and died that night.
Ganesh is the lord of the Muladhara Chakra, the lowest of the energy centers, in which the Kundalini lies sleeping. Now just imagine: If you are doing penance to make the energy move upward and suddenly you reverse its flow and make it move downward in great spasms, what is going to happen? You will blow out your nervous system like this man did.
Consider two other benefits of remaining celibate. According to Ayurveda it takes thirty days for a drop of semen to form. In those who are good celibates the semen is so sticky it can be pulled out into a meter-long thread without breaking; very sticky. And its consistency is like cream. If it falls onto cloth it can be knocked off without staining or separating. Such high-quality semen is sure to produce high-quality progeny if used for that purpose.
Also, ojas is a living substance. We say it is derived from semen because all the Jivas in the unused sperm give up their individual existence and merge with the ojas. This can happen only in a true celibate and is a sort of blessing to the Jivas in the sperms because they become exempt from taking any future births. I mentioned that the ojas forms the halo or aura which attracts people to a saint. How could they be attracted unless it was a living substance? I am talking about a true attraction here, not some sensory enticement. Buddha’s aura, for instance, affected everyone within a fifty-mile radius of wherever he was staying: They all became automatically calmer and more introverted.
I hope you know now some of the importance of Brahmacharya. Now it is necessary to consider the methods by which celibacy can be preserved. The most obvious method is simple avoidance of sex, but this is not perfect. The more you restrict yourself the more frequent will be your nocturnal emissions. If you go in for physical control you must be very thorough. Some asanas will deaden the sexual nerves. In certain rituals a thin wire is passed through the penis and tied tightly around it to ensure that not even a drop of prostate fluid is lost. But all this is limited because if the mind is not controlled, thoughts of sex will still emanate and ojas will be lost. Loss of ojas is far more detrimental to the body and mind than is loss of physical semen.
The mind must be controlled. Ganja (marijuana flowers) and tobacco smoked together “burn” the semen if you don’t eat any heavy food afterward. The tobacco makes you physically impotent, and the ganja makes you mentally impotent. This is quite useful, but it is still reliance on external agencies. You must “burn” the sex center in the brain, up in the thalamus, if you want to be perfectly free of sexual proclivities. Some people say that celibacy means never discharging semen, even in a dream; but I say that only that man who never even gets an erection is the true celibate. His penis should not even “rumble” when he gets some stimulus. Not only should a good female celibate not ooze from her vagina, but her clitoris should not even twitch once. Mental control is essential if you hope to achieve this state.
This is not an overnight process, you understand. It takes years, and a good guru is necessary. He will allow his “child” to try out sex as much as he or she likes for a month or so. After the month is over the “child” will know exactly what are the effects of sex on the body, mind, and sadhana, and he or she will understand why it is useless to try to do serious sadhana and simultaneously try to carry on an active sex life.
An Aghori takes a somewhat different approach to sex and celibacy, of course. One day I got wild with my penis. I told it, “You bloody thing, what do you think of yourself, always spoiling my sleep by becoming hard?” I went into the bathroom and found some acid and poured it over my penis. My God, it was terrible! Then, when the pain was troubling me I got wilder and said, “So, not enough, eh?” and I grated some green chilies and applied them as a poultice.
I can’t tell you what agony I was in for three days, but it healed without a scar. In fact, it acted as a type of purification.
Ayurveda states that semen resides in the brain. The thick white semen from the testicles does not travel upward into the head, of course; this statement means that the brain is the seat of ojas, because the whole process which culminates in the ejaculation of semen begins with a disturbance in the mind which causes certain brain cells to be dilated. This dilation causes ojas to move downward and impel the seminal movement via the neurotransmitters. A firm mind means firm ojas and no emission of semen; loss of mental control means loss of both ojas and semen.
Firmness of the mind is always difficult, if only because you have so many rnanubandhanas with so many individuals of the opposite sex that you will always be running into someone with whom you once had a sexual relationship, no matter how far you try to hide from society.
Once a certain lady used to come and offer fruit and what-have-you daily to a certain celibate sadhu. The day came when she asked if she could massage his legs. He permitted her to do so. In the course of the massage her hand accidentally touched his penis. “Don’t touch that!” he commanded. “That is Mahapapa (the Great Sinner).”
The next day, to return the favor, the sadhu started to massage the lady. Accidentally his hand touched her vulva. “Maharaj,” she said, “don’t touch there. That is Naraka Kunda (the Pit of Hell).”
The sadhu, however, had become excited by the touch of her genitals and said to her, “You know that the only place for sinners is hell. Therefore, if I now put the Great Sinner into the Pit of Hell all the sin will be extinguished.” The lady, who had also become excited by his touch, was only too ready to agree. And that is how the sadhu came to lose his celibacy.
Even if you can maintain your physical celibacy you may still get yourself into trouble if you are not careful. Shankaracharya (the great preacher of Vedanta) was once made to learn a good lesson because he forgot that mental Brahmacharya is more important than physical Brahmacharya. He wanted to debate with Mandan Mishra on religious texts in the city of Mithila. Entering the city he made his way to a group of young women at a well to ask for directions to his adversary’s house. The girls had a nice laugh at his expense when they heard why he had come and told him, “Maharaj, before you try to debate with Mandan Mishra first debate with his parrots, and if you can defeat them then only think of going on to him.” Shankaracharya left in a huff, but once he reached Mandan Mishra’s house he saw the truth of what they had said: All the parrots in the big banyan trees encircling the house were reciting texts they had memorized because of Mandan Mishra’s habit of practicing out loud in his garden.
Shankaracharya was greeted warmly by his opponent, who realized what the zealous young man had in mind. Recalling the obligation a host has to his guests Mandan Mishra offered food to Shankaracharya, but it was indignantly refused: “No, I have come to debate, not to eat.” Mandan Mishra’s wife told him, “You will have your debate without fail, Maharaj, but first please do enjoy a meal with us.” Shankaracharya was adamant, however, so the debate began.
Before long it became clear that Mandan Mishra could not win. Suddenly his wife said to Shankaracharya, “Maharaj, the texts state that the husband and the wife are two halves of the same being. You must also debate with me, the Vamangi, the left half of my husband.” Shankaracharya had no choice but to agree.
She began to discuss the erotic art, the Kamakala. Her opponent had never had any experience of women and was therefore unable to answer her. Moreover, as he was a sworn celibate there was no way he could go out and experience sex in order to learn about it. What to do? He asked for a twenty-four-hour recess of the debate. Mandan Mishra’s wife smiled at him and said, “Maharaj, nowhere in the rules of debate is a recess permitted. You are about to lose. But that’s all right; you are our guest. Take your recess.” Only Ma could be so generous, even at the cost of victory.
Shankaracharya went back to his disciples and told them to guard his body carefully. He then went into a trance and used his subtle body to enter the physical body of an old king who had just died. Everyone in attendance on the king was astonished, to say the least, to see the ruler jump back to life. His wives — kings always possess large harems — were especially astonished because he immediately called them in to him. Some of them noticed a change in his personality, especially during lovemaking, but they feared for their necks and dared not say anything.
Having thoroughly learned the science of love from these ladies, Shankaracharya returned to his own body. The next morning he defeated Mandan Mishra’s wife in the debate. Then, feeling generous, his ego pampered by his success, he said grandly, “Now, Mandan Mishra, I am pleased to appoint you head of my monastery at Jyotirmath near Badrinath.”
Mandan Mishra’s wife laughed in Shankaracharya’s face and said, “At one time I thought you were a true ascetic, but now I see you are a fake just like all the rest.”
Shankaracharya got the shock of his lifetime and said, “What do you mean?”
She replied, “You teach that the physical universe is just an illusion and that Maya does not exist. If you are not your body but are the pure, undefiled Universal Soul as you claim to be then your vow of celibacy applies to your body and to your mind and to your entire consciousness. How could you then legitimately enjoy sex through your subtle body? Are you not guilty of breaking your vows? Is this not a stain, a stigma, on your ochre robes of renunciation?
“Moreover, if the Universal Soul is all that exists in the universe and all else is illusory then you and your debating and your success in this debate are also illusory. If you, I, and my husband are all the same Universal Soul, then with whom are you debating? Yourself? Isn’t it a contradiction in terms?
“My husband is named Mandana (construction); he believes in building things up. He encourages and provides confidence to those who come to him. You believe only in destruction; all for what? To prove to the world, which you believe to be illusory, that you are unconquerable in debate. What is your value? Can you compare with my husband?”
Shankaracharya had to keep quiet. Shakti had taught him a good lesson. Actually there is some distinction between physical and mental Brahmacharya, even though Mandan Mishra’s wife was correct in her argument that a sworn Brahmachari must observe total celibacy. It is never bad to preserve bodily celibacy even if you must perform mental sex to complete some rnanubandhana. Nor is it bad to preserve mental Brahmacharya, to be completely aloof from the body, if you must perform physical coitus to fulfill some rna. This is how an Aghori works, in fact: The body does whatever it must do to complete its rnas, and the mind is a passive observer, never self-identifying with the actions of the body. It is unbelievably difficult, though.
Someone once asked me, “If Tukaram Maharaj was really a true devotee of God, concentrating on Vitthala (Vishnu) twenty-four hours a day, how could he have had two wives and fathered so many children?” This is a good question which deserves a careful answer. Tukaram Maharaj was never apart from Vitthala mentally even while his physical body continued to fulfill its rnanubandhanas. His rnas with his wives included sex, and his body performed the sex act with his wives. His mind, though, was never aware of his body or of what it was doing. His mental Brahmacharya was perfect, so he could father children and still remain pure.
But my questioner was not completely satisfied with this explanation and posed another question: “If Tukaram Maharaj was not self-identifying with his body, who was? The penis can become erect only when the ego self-identifies with it. If Tukaram Maharaj’s ego had lost itself in Vitthala, what remained to self-identify with his penis?”
I love to answer such questions, because their acuteness shows me that the people who are listening to me are thinking about what I have said. Something must have been inside Tukaram’s body self-identifying; this much is clear. And one other thing is clear: It wasn’t Vitthala. If it had been Vitthala or some other deity, or if Tukaram Maharaj had self-identified with the Universal Soul during copulation, then the power of the deity would have been transmitted to the children, even to some tiny extent, and they would have become spiritual giants. But they didn’t; they were perfectly ordinary, mundane. There must therefore have been another personality present, one with sufficient rnanubandhana with Tukaram’s wives to perform sex with them through the medium of Tukaram’s body. Tukaram Maharaj was not even observing it, though; he was elsewhere.
Rnanubandhana can be completed without physical sex. An ethereal being lacks a body with which to copulate. If that being desires sex it must locate a couple engaged in the sex act, enter one of their bodies, and enjoy. Self-identification must not be permitted, though; then there is no stain of karma.
Now, the practical application: Suppose there is a girl who loves me. Perhaps because of the social situation she is unable to marry me and must marry someone else. I am not ethereal, but my subtle body is. When I decide that the time is right to fulfill my rnanubandhana of sex with her I will wait until she and her husband are in a deep sexual embrace. Then, by entering his body, I will see to it that she gets full satisfaction.
She gets her satisfaction from me, which breaks my rnanubandhana with her. She is fully satiated, because I know how to satiate her; her husband would never be able to do it. But the husband knows that she is satiated and thinks he is responsible. He takes the credit for being a big stud bull, which is fine with me because by his self-identification he gets all the karma. I get my sexual enjoyment and remain untouched by karma. Everyone is happy, and I have preserved my physical celibacy.
SVAPNESHVARI SIDDHI AND SHIVA LATA MUDRA
If you want to preserve even your mental celibacy you must have some siddhi. Svapneshvari will do nicely. Suppose I discover a rnanubandhana with a girl in France. I find it very inconvenient and time-consuming to travel to France and romance her. So, I send Svapneshvari to her in a male form. In a dream she finds herself enjoying sex with a man whose face is always hidden from her. She is satiated, because sex in a dream is always more satisfying than is physical sex. There are no inhibitions, no fear of discovery, no worry about inadequacy, no restraint to full pleasure in a dream. By satiating her in this way my rnanubandhana with her is broken. She never knows who has come to her and never cares to know. There is no karma and no interruption of either my mental or physical celibacy.
Absolute celibacy is too far away for most people, of course, but our Vedic religion has provided for everyone no matter what their level of achievement. If you restrict yourself to having sex with one partner, for example if you are married and engage in sex only with your spouse, this is also Brahmacharya, the Brahmacharya appropriate for married people. And as long as you observe total celibacy during specific periods of penance you too can achieve great things, if you work hard.
However, even a married man can practice absolute celibacy and still fulfill his sexual duty to his wife if he knows Shiva Lata Mudra. He must worship his wife as the cosmic Shakti, and she must worship him as Lord Shiva. Shiva is the controller, Lata the controlled. Lata literally means “creeper,” like the ivy which twines around a column. Because Shakti has emanated from Shiva and wishes to return to Him She is impelled to come into close proximity to Him. He is the center, the Linga, the fixed, unwavering nucleus. In order to become one with Him, Shakti gives up Her own independent characteristics and makes an absolute surrender to Him. A creeper has no support of its own, which is why it must take the help of a tree or pillar. Once it has selected its support to grow on, the creeper cannot change its mind and shift to another support: It is committed. The tree is beautified by the creeper, the creeper is supported by the tree. Neither is complete without the other.
When a man and a woman come together for Shiva Lata Mudra the woman must sit on the man’s left thigh and hold his penis with her right hand. He must cup her left breast with his left hand. Like a creeper she drapes herself around him, clinging tightly like a delicate vine; and he permits himself to be clung to, offering her support.
There are three types of Shiva Lata Mudra: mundane, spiritual, and one which is beyond both the mundane and the spiritual. The mundane gives maximum sexual excitement; the spiritual is for sadhana; and “beyond” is too advanced to be dealt with here. In all types the female counts japa with her left hand, the male with his right. The mantras are specific for each type. He forgets who he is, and she forgets who she is. He thinks, “I am Lord Shiva in the form of Bhairava (the Fearful Lord), and this is my Shakti, my Bhairavi.” She thinks, “This is my Lord Shiva, and I am His Grand Consort, His Bhairavi (the Fearful Goddess).”
If the couple is doing it for mundane purposes they must concentrate on exciting each other. Without realizing it she will begin to breathe through her left nostril and will direct that Shakti to him. His right nostril will be working and that Shakti of his will be directed to her. Hypersecretion of all the glands will result, and at the moment of greatest excitation cessation of breathing occurs for a moment. Then the male mounts and discharges his semen convulsively. Because of hypersecretion he will now eject three teaspoonsful of semen as opposed to his normal one teaspoonful. Because the vagina and cervix have become utterly loose and dilated the sperm will go directly to the mouth of the cervix. The result is a child, if this is done at the right time of the month. This is the Brahmacharya appropriate to the ordinary householder because by such sex, satiation occurs for a month or more and ojas is not wasted by frequent orgasms.
The spiritual Shiva Lata Mudra is quite different. The Shiva must control his Shakti very carefully to ensure that she does not become sexually excited. The couple should be able to sit together for at least three hours without the least excitation, no twitching or oozing. The girl must understand that she will not get an ordinary orgasm this way. If she waits patiently she will eventually get a super orgasm which will make her forget sex forever. If this Mudra is done properly she will go into Bhava Samadhi: Her emotions will crescendo until her mind becomes totally one-pointed, directed toward Shiva, and she will partly forget her worldly existence for awhile. Even Mahabhava Samadhi, which I call emotional highlights, is possible — total immersion in Shiva but with retained awareness of the bliss. Wonderful!
The concentration must be intense and the self-identification with Bhairava and Bhairavi perfect. Usually the couple should have already enjoyed plenty of sex together, should have experimented with sex as much as they desired, so that they can drop it for several months and work for something beyond ordinary sex. Once a couple gets initiated into this practice they develop such a liking for it that they count the hours until they can practice it again; they can think of nothing else except performing it. This is good; their minds are effectively disengaged from mundane things by this sadhana and their urge for togetherness is fully satisfied. In the beginning the woman must be willing to wait. If she is patient and works hard her experience will affect her more strongly than hundreds of orgasms all at once; she will be forever satiated.
The beauty is the wonderful play of the two partners. At one point the male will feel such overwhelming love for his Shakti that he thinks, “I must give her everything.” Then Shakti becomes indignant: “I am your Shakti; how can you give me anything? You are useless without me, you could not even exist.” Then Shiva smiles and says, “Oh, is that so? From where did you originate if not from me?” The intoxication of this play cannot be described; you simply have to experience it yourself to know what it is.
This play can only begin when the true personalities of the man and woman surface. Where do you find nowadays a man who is strong as a tree, solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, firm enough to support his partner without a single lapse? And where do you find a woman who is sure enough of herself to surrender totally to her partner, relying totally on him for support like a creeper does on a tree? This is why people find sex so unsatisfactory today and why they go in for dolls and dildos instead. It is no wonder that today’s people are maladjusted sexually. They will get a glimpse of what real sex can be only if they study and practice this technique. Otherwise they will continue to grope about, making a mess of things, copulating without satisfaction, becoming more and more neurotic.
Once the first posture is perfected the couple moves on to the second posture: face to face, the female on the male’s lap, the penis near but not in the vagina. Being face to face there is no holding of penis or breast. Once they can sit this way for three hours without the least excitation there are three other stages. In the final stage there is full penetration of the vagina by the erect penis with full control: not a twitch, not a rumble. Only when this is perfected can they move on to Vajroli. The examination of a student who might like to learn Vajroli involves making two girls sit on the boy, one on each thigh, for three hours. When the boy can do that he has achieved — a little.
I know that many of the people who read this are immediately going to jump up, rush out the door, grab a partner, sit down, and try it out. I don’t mind if they do; they will learn soon enough that without adequate prior preparation it is impossible to succeed at Lata Mudra. You will simply get aroused, and even if you succeed in avoiding orgasm you will still ooze. Until you reach the state where you can self-identify with Shiva or with Bhairavi, depending on your gender, for a full three hours at a time, you will be unable to succeed at this because it is not your personality which will be achieving it; it is the personality of Shiva or Shakti which you have invoked and projected into yourself which will succeed at it. Which means that without a guru to show you the way you can try this for a hundred years and you will still be unable to perfect it. It is good to know about it, though; once you learn about it you may become truly interested in it and not merely curious about it. Once you have a genuine desire to learn it Nature will see that a teacher comes your way. Nature is never cruel. She always gives you what you want, provided you want it badly enough.
Until you do locate a teacher there are things you can do to prepare yourself, if you are willing to work at them sincerely. First you must utterly efface from your consciousness the idea that you and your partner are lovers, or husband and wife. You must treat each other as mother and son. Freud was so obsessed by the Oedipus complex because he never realized that sex was not the only form of union which can occur between two individuals. He said that all girls experience penis envy. Actually they experience the desire for Shiva’s linga, which is the state of oneness, and when this desire is projected out into the body it becomes penis envy in the unenlightened individual. The effect of Freud’s writings has been to make whoever reads them overly conscious of the body and, therefore, of sex. Sex is no doubt important, but it is only secondary. Freud tried to make it primary.
This is why I always say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Generations have now grown up studying Freud, learning wrong or imperfect knowledge because of his errors, and convincing themselves that there is nothing to human interaction except sex. This is why most Americans think they are satisfied with sex alone. Sensual love is all their parents learned. They never developed true, deep maternal love, and since only a pervert would have sex with his or her child that parent ends up loving the child very little. Such parents just don’t know how to love their children, since they only know sexual love. American children grow up without any parental love and become so love-starved that they will take any affection they can get. Only a few are choosy. The rest just can’t help themselves.
If you look at a voluptuous woman or a handsome man and see only the skeleton beneath the flesh, many benefits will accrue to you. You will communicate with a deeper layer of the individual, one closer to the center than the superficial flesh and skin which is that individual’s Maya. Loving Maya always leads to misery; loving the skeleton at least enables you to project your love onto a form that will continue to exist even after death. It is certainly not the ultimate, but it is an improvement.
A male should look at every woman, especially his partner, and see Ma within her. A female should see all men and boys, and especially her partner, as her sons. This reduces the danger of falling into sex, it teaches the couple something of parental love, and it leads to fidelity in the relationship.
Another thing: All desire for personal enjoyment or self-gratification has to be effaced from the mind. If you have even the slightest intention to take or gain something from your partner, that tiny desire can snowball when your nervous system is under full load, and an avalanche of energy can result, ending in sex. You must forget how to take and learn only how to give. Does any real mother ever ask for anything from her child? No, nothing, not even love. And a child never need ask anything from a good mother because she will provide it without the child’s asking, which allows the child to give his or her love freely. Shiva is known as the Great Giver. He has given up everything and sits alone in the smashan waiting for someone to love Him. You have to become like Shiva, sitting alone in the smashan of the world, if you ever hope to achieve at this sadhana.
These are just preliminaries, of course; but they are essential preliminaries, and worth working hard on if you want to obtain the benefits of this sadhana: good celibacy; fidelity to one partner because of longing, not legalities; the presence of Shiva and Shakti in your bodies as Avishkara; and eventual samadhi of intense emotion.
AMRITA
One of the benefits of perfect Brahmacharya is Amrita. Amrita, which literally means “undying,” is a secretion of the pineal gland. It is the true Fountain of Youth, because through Amrita you can preserve your youth almost permanently.
There are three important rasas (juices) in the world: Amra Rasa, or Kama Rasa, which is mango juice; Charma Rasa, which is semen (literally, “skin juice”); and Bhakti Rasa or Rama Rasa, which is Amrita. Mango juice represents the epitome of nourishing food. It strengthens the body but is an aphrodisiac, making the semen move downward. Rama Rasa becomes obtainable only when the semen (that means the ojas, remember, not the sticky white fluid) is made to move upward, undisturbed. Semen, or ojas, is the pivot between the mundane world, the world of Kama, and the spiritual realm, the world of Rama. As they say, “Where there is Kama (lust) there is no Rama, and where there is Rama (divinity) there is no Kama.”
It might seem logical that semen would be the best diet to increase ojas, but this is not so. I did meet a forty-year-old whore in France who looked a mere twenty-five, and she attributed it to drinking semen. There are side-effects, though. It makes you more prone to certain diseases, and, more importantly, it makes your Apana Vayu move more forcefully downward, making you more and more sexually arousable. This is because semen is not ojas but merely the raw material from which ojas is produced. Those who drink semen and expect their ojas to increase will obtain only physical benefits, like the French whore did. It is not so easy to extract Shakti from Maya.
Celibacy gives you access to Amrita, which must then be externalized if you want to use it to obtain physical immortality. It is not necessary that the Amrita come from your body for it to be effective on you. There are other sources you can tap. The easiest is to locate a girl who is just about to have the first menses of her life. An expert will be able to spot that moment when Amrita will be available from the corners of her eyes. She will actually thank you when you remove it, because it will feel as if a tremendous weight has been removed from her body. That weight is a good part of her Shakti. By removing it you shorten her life span by up to ten years. Don’t forget the Law of Karma. Of course if you didn’t remove it she would probably waste it in masturbation or fornication anyway, but that doesn’t exonerate you. And besides, unless you are an expert or know where to locate one this method is of no use to you.
Or, you can procure an elephant. Do you know that this was the real reason kings were supposed to keep elephants? Most kings never knew. An elephant is not just for pomp and pageantry. If it is well cared for and becomes pleased with its master it can take Amrita from its body and present it to its master. Today no one knows how to do this, save a few who tell no one.
Even if you are married you can become immortal through Amrita, though during the sadhana and forever afterward you must observe absolute Brahmacharya, because Amrita is a glandular substance. Whenever Kama Agni, the Fire of Lust, becomes enkindled in you it causes chemical changes which would consume this substance and nullify all the work you had done to obtain it. You will then ask, “Is it wise even to try to gain physical immortality?” Well, I never had that desire. I want to die out so that I can be free of all my earthly limitations. It just depends on what you want to do. These are the facts I am presenting to you, and you have to decide what to do with them. You can use your Amrita to create more ojas, you can use it to obtain immortality, you can do whatever you please with it. But first you have to obtain it.
And don’t think it is not wonderful to be immortal; it is. Think of Chang Dev, the Aghori who learned that he would only be able to meet his guru after 1,400 years. Now, in 1,400 years who knows what sort of incarnations you may have to take? What if you forget all about spirituality and miss your chance? So Chang Dev deliberately remained alive for 1,400 years and then met his guru: Mukta Bai, the fourteen-year-old sister of Shri Jnaneshwar. Yogi Chang Dev used a different method than Amrita, but the idea is the same.
Amrita is actually being produced continually in everyone’s body, and continuously it drips down into the gut where it is incinerated by Jathara Agni, the fire of digestion. A Yogi can trap this Amrita and prevent it from being destroyed by practicing Khechari Mudra. The guru first tests the aspirant to determine whether or not he’ll be able to succeed. If you pass this test you then must practice Shirshasana, the “headstand,” for several hours daily until you perfect it. Many people today are being misled by half-baked Yoga teachers who tell them, “Do Shirshasana, it sends plenty of blood to the brain”— bull! They prescribe the headstand to everyone without considering its uses and restrictions. For example, those who indulge in sex should never practice Shirshasana lest they weaken themselves both physically and mentally; the brain and nerves will suffer. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The real asanas are not physical anyway; they are mental. Can you even imagine what mental Shirshasana must be like? If you can you can do away with the need for the physical headstand altogether. But it is not so easy.
When your Shirshasana becomes firm your guru will begin to cut your frenulum lingua with a piece of rock salt; not a blade! He cuts only a tiny distance each day, and the salt prevents the cut surfaces from healing together. This is very delicate: If he cuts too far the student may never be able to speak again. This is not the modern idea of taking a scalpel and swish! Straight through on the first go! Oh no! There is a reason for doing it gradually.
When the frenulum has been sufficiently cut, and the tongue can be retracted to cover the back of the mouth, the guru selects an auspicious day to begin Khechari Mudra. On that day you will be told to perform Shirshasana and put your tongue completely backward into your mouth. Your guru will warn you that whenever you feel something dripping onto your tongue you should not swallow it but instead come down out of the posture and let the secretion flow from your mouth into your hand. This is Amrita, which should be taken to your guru, who will put it into a special paan and only then make you eat it. This secretion needs to be consumed only thrice. After that your mind becomes steady, firm absolutely, which will make your meditation steady, no waverings of the mind to any side. Isn’t that useful?
Amrita really can make you “undying,” to the extent you follow the conditions. There are a lot of conditions, the main one being that you must never again enjoy sex or else the Amrita will dissolve and within a short time your body will age completely.
It is the same way with those amulets which some gurus implant into their disciples’ arms or legs. These amulets have two important effects: You grow younger and younger as the years roll by, and you develop Vak Siddhi, which means that whatever you say comes true. When a guru gives such an amulet to a disciple two promises are extracted: total celibacy from then on and complete equanimity even in the face of severe provocation, because any curse you deliver will come true and will ruin both you and whoever you curse.
In the spiritual field, if you fall down you don’t just have to stay and repeat a grade like you do in school. You will have to start all over again right from nursery school, which will take a number of lifetimes. To fool about with these things without knowing their gravity is terribly dangerous.
VAJROLI
There is another way to obtain Amrita: the practice of Vajroli. Anyone can learn Vajroli, but for householders the prior practice of Shiva Lata Mudra is essential. So long as they are unable to control themselves this much they will be unable to do Vajroli.
To learn Vajroli you must first thoroughly clean out your body: eyes, nose, mouth, stomach, and digestive tract. The upper body is cleaned by swallowing, churning, and regurgitating water. The bowel is washed by sucking water up through the anus into the colon, churning it, and expelling it. The urinary passage is cleansed by sucking water through the penis into the bladder and through the ureters into the kidneys and then releasing it. This last process is called Gaja Karma because elephants (Gaja) suck up water with their trunks and playfully spray themselves for a bath.
To be able to do this you must know the method of controlling Apana Vayu, the body force which causes the expulsion of urine, feces, flatus, semen, menses, and fetus. I can’t tell you here how you can make Apana, which naturally moves downward, go up, but consider this: If you want to urinate and you start to strain, the flow won’t starti you must relax to start the stream. And in Ayurveda you are taught that if you clench your teeth tightly whenever you urinate or defecate then your teeth will always be firmly fixed in your skull and will always be healthy. How are the teeth and Apana connected? Think about it.
Anyway, after you have been able to suck up water through the penis and hold a bladder full of water for three hours you proceed to use milk, to cool the genital organs. Then ghee (clarified butter), to lubricate. Honey next; it is very sticky and hard to make flow upward. Finally, you do it with mercury, which is extremely heavy. You must use mercury which has been purified and prepared in the Tantric way; otherwise it is a deadly poison. When you can hold a bladder full of mercury for three hours without spilling a drop you have reached the level of the first qualification.
A woman prepares for Vajroli in exactly the same way: She learns to suck up water, milk, and so on, up to mercury, with her vagina. She reaches the level of the first qualification when she can hold a vagina full of mercury for three hours. You must have heard of the women of the Place Pigalle in Paris who can pick up one-franc coins from tables with their vaginas; I have seen this with my own eyes. And I am told that in Laos and Vietnam some bargirls can smoke cigarettes vaginally, so don’t think that sucking mercury into the vagina is impossible. It’s not; it’s just hard work.
Mercury is the most important element in Tantra. It has hundreds of uses but in this context we should note that it is the best preservative available. Half a handful of it is sufficient to preserve an entire silo of grain for a very long time. No insects or rodents dare venture near it; no fungus or mold can grow there. This was a common practice in ancient India.
When mercury is sucked up into the genitourinary tract its main effects are on the prostate in men and on various glands including Bartholin’s glands in women. It causes these glands to contract. A well-contracted prostate will not enlarge in old age. Also, when these glands are contracted their secretions will not flow so easily, so right there there is some control over the sexual response. The outstanding characteristic of prostatic fluid is that it propagates life; we know this because sperm need it to stay alive. The fluid from a female’s glands is called Stri Shukra (female semen) in Ayurveda, meaning that it should be preserved by a woman as carefully as a man preserves his semen.
A man who practices Vajroli on a woman sucks up with his penis the secretions which ooze out as she gets excited. These oozings further contract the prostate; in fact, they cause to be produced a new type of cell which mediates prostate function. The woman used for this purpose loses ten years of her life span, though, since such a great amount of her Shakti is removed. Of course a woman who knows Vajroli can “milk” an unsuspecting man of his semen with her suction. She can make him eject over and over again until there is nothing left to eject, which will sap him of all his ojas. Her glands will be well benefited by this, at his expense.
If you want to practice this technique you need a body which is in good shape. For the first twenty-three years of my life I didn’t know what salt was, and I had never experienced sex. Westerners eat salt excessively all their lives, and they are introduced to the opposite sex very early. Western men who waste their semen even once every three days will suffer for it; their resistance will drop and their nerves will be affected. This makes knowledge of Vajroli all the more important. A man who knows real Vajroli should be able to satisfy dozens of females in a single night, each female having at least ten orgasms, without letting even a drop of prostate fluid fall, and once he is finished he should be able to calmly wash his hands and smoke a cigarette.
Don’t forget, though, that the Law of Karma is very queer. You can get yourself into trouble even if you know Vajroli. I know, it happened to me. I had been going along merrily performing a little Vajroli on so many girls. A little only, because if I had done the full thing they would have been bleeding and in bed for months because they knew nothing of the technique. Besides, it would have shortened their lives, and I wanted to avoid that karma.
One day I met a very powerful being— a Mahapurusha, actually— who said to me, “So, you’ve become a beef-eater, eh?”
I didn’t like the way he sneered that and got wild. “I have never eaten even a mouthful of beef in my entire life. How dare you call me a beef-eater!”
He said, “When you do Vajroli with beef-eating girls, isn’t that the same thing as eating it yourself?”
I had to pull my ears at that one; he was right. When you suck up vaginal secretions you take an immense amount of Shakti, and the body’s Shakti is composed of the essence of the food consumed. I had been eating beef that way. The Mahapurusha made me purify myself. My God! It was rough. After that I paid more attention to my partners and finally quit altogether. The Law of Karma is really rough. I’ve made mistakes, no doubt; I’m not infallible, as many see the Pope. But I’ve always confessed to my mistakes, and Nature has always pardoned me. I cannot describe to you the awesome magnanimity of Nature; it is amazing!
Control is all in the mind. Physical control, like pinching the penis at the moment of orgasm, is most crude. There are other methods. If you prepare mercury in a certain way and fill your navel with it you can copulate for days on end and never spill even a drop of prostate fluid. But this is also unsatisfactory because it is an external method; once you lose your mercury you are through. Mental control is both more refined and more efficient.
Now, the applications of Vajroli: Modem scientists claim that only the head of the spermatozoon yields the progeny, but actually millions of beings can be produced from each of the millions of spermatozoa present in each drop of semen. This is how Shukracharya, the guru of the Asuras (demons), could resuscitate all the Asura troops killed in the wars with the gods. That is why he was called Shukracharya (Semen-Teacher).
At the other end of the pole from the Asuras are the Rishis, who believed in family planning. A Rishi would have one child in twelve years, or even less frequently, but he would enjoy vigorous intercourse with his wife regularly, thanks to Vajroli. Once he and his wife did decide to have a child they would first decide on its sex, and then on its type: grammarian, musician, mathematician, saint, or whatever. They would then construct a good horoscope for the proposed child to be born under, selecting planetary positions according to the type of child desired. Some of this information as to what sort of child will be conceived when you copulate on a certain lunar day in a certain position has been preserved on the walls of our temples, such as the Sun Temple at Konarka in Orissa.
The Rishis knew much more than this, though. They knew all about the subtle or ethereal planets which exist along with the gross planets we can see. When the time came for the Rishi and his mate to perform coitus they would first perform all eighty-four of the postures designed especially for intercourse, using Vajroli. Then at the precise moment of the lunar day and with the correct lunar asterism predominating to maximize the child’s attributes the Rishi would discharge his semen, which would go directly to the cervix — no waiting in the vagina. The Rishi would be precise to the last second, because four minutes of time means a difference of one degree of celestial arc. The couple would have the best of all factors: proper mood, hypersecretion, full excitement, precise moment. The ecstasy would be so great that it would permeate the zygote thus conceived and would produce optimal samskaras. A Rishi can control his own samskaras, of course, and can juggle them to create new genes if he so desires. Let Western scientists discover the twenty-fourth chromosome and then they may understand a little more of the mystery of life — a little.
You see, by this method of knowing what the child will become even before it is conceived you know exactly what to do with the child as he or she grows up. Isn’t this a better way than coupling haphazardly like animals and producing brats? This is why I say the Rishis knew about creation and today’s human beings know only about procreation.
Rishis have upward-moving semen, of course, and do not need to copulate to have children. Originally they did it by force of will alone. A Rishi would look at a woman with such intense affection that she would become pregnant. Later it was done in other ways, including mantras. Rishis can also create thousands of beings just by wiping the sweat off their foreheads. As humans forgot these ways the business of having children became degraded, and humans began to breed like animals do, using coitus.
Another reason a man should know Vajroli is that women are said to be nine times more passionate than men. Only when his wife is satiated has a man fulfilled his duty to her. He must ask her ten times, or even more, “Are you finished? Have you had enough?” But a man’s ego is hurt to ask because he knows his wife may not find him satisfactory. So 99.99 percent of men never ask, and their wives are never satisfied fully.
Moreover, most men have no idea of female anatomy. Women’s orgasms come in waves, while a man’s is only one. A man has to last as long as he can after penetration before ejaculation. The immature man goes off quickly, and the man with a little knowledge lasts a few minutes at most. This is insufficient to satisfy the female, and since almost all people are interested only in physical sex, there is misery.
Consider the Sanskrit proverb: “Bhoge na bhogata; bhogam iva bhogata.” This means that the enjoyment of pleasure lies not in the act of enjoyment but in the fact of enjoyment. Human beings have become very selfish. They want to enjoy their own orgasms and can’t be bothered about their partners’. This attitude will never satisfy you, though. You can only get true satisfaction from sex when you are more interested in your partner’s satiation than in your own, because only then will your partner reciprocate fully, freely, and enthusiastically and do his or her best to satisfy you. That joy of having another being attempt to satisfy you is far greater than the pleasure of the orgasm itself. This is the meaning of that proverb.
The real bliss of sex occurs when the male is able to steer his mate into a condition of absolute sexual frenzy. ln order to do this the male must know each erotic center in his partner’s body, and he must know the relationship between the erotic centers and the moon. The moon plays a very important role in each woman’s life. Menstruation is derived from a word meaning “moon” since it occurs at intervals of one lunar month. In the past, women’s menstrual cycles were much more regular than they are now; everything was more natural.
A different erotic center in the female body is awakened on each lunar day. If the male concentrates his passion on that center the female’s passion will ignite very quickly, and the resulting orgasms will be far more intense. Finger action should be sufficient to cause a female to have ten oozings, if you know which center is proper for which lunar day. The male should cooperate with the female’s body so there is no need to struggle to arouse her. This way the arousal happens automatically. It should be intuitive, yes, but intuition alone is insufficient. Knowledge of the woman’s body is also required.
Do you know how many erotic centers are present in the buttocks alone? Here, I’ll give you a practical demonstration on this handy teenage girl. Now, when I press here do you see the result? And that is just one finger. Look, I’ll add one more finger. You see, she can’t stand it, she has to break away because the excitement is too much. If I continue she will start to ooze, and if I do it with concentration she should have 100 oozings from finger pressure alone, all because I am pressing the center which is more active today.
Shiva plays Shakti like an instrument; humans should follow His lead. The erotic centers are the keys of the instrument. The male must know which key to press and when. Does the instrument ever complain about being controlled by the musician and demand to be allowed to play him occasionally? No, it’s absurd. But this does not devalue Shakti in any way. Without an instrument or a voice no musician can make music. Both are essential; neither can do without the other. It just so happens that the instrument must be controlled and the musician must control; this is Nature’s way. If you can think of any other way please let me know about it. I will worship your lotus feet as my guru for teaching me something new.
And remember, control is possible only when you learn how to give and forget how to take. Today’s men not only do not know how to satiate a woman sexually, they are not interested in doing so. They only want to emit their teaspoonful or two of semen and relax. This is why men can no longer control women.
When someone accepts a gift from you, you have successfully inserted an element of control into your relationship with that individual. Your choice of gift and time of giving can influence events. To take, you must come under someone else’s influence to create the opportunity for your taking to occur. This is why Shiva is the Great Giver. He never takes anything from anyone, so He is eternally free from the influence of Maya.
Can a musician take music from his instrument? No, he must give his experience, his expertise to the instrument, and then the instrument will automatically produce the music. In fact, a musician really has only a foggy idea of how instruments make music, unless he is only an artisan and not an artist. A real musician becomes so engrossed by his music that he is amazed when it finally comes forth from within him. The musician gives his all to the instrument, and, inspired by this gift, the instrument gives its all to the musician. It is a mutual thing. Isn’t it wonderful?
The human body is a much better instrument than any musical instrument which has ever been created because you can play it in so many ways. All parts of the body have erotic significance, especially the ear lobes, navel, buttocks, and lips. In the old days, you know, there was no such thing as kissing, which began only in Kali Yuga. In Kali Yuga the mouth has assumed great importance because we get much of our prana through food and we know how to communicate only in oral speech.
Originally people smelled one another. Children would come in to their elders who would embrace them by smelling their heads. Lovers would embrace each other and take in each other’s body odors. Smell pertains to the Earth Element, the most gross, physical element. Sniffing inflames the passions of those who want to enjoy coitus. All the senses are important: taste for kissing; touch for caressing; hearing, verbal and nonverbal. Sight is the most important because it permits a direct telepathic communication between the two. They can go beyond words and feelings.
The senses provide different instruments to the conductor or composer to create the symphony. The asanas are musical tunes and phrases. Our texts on sex describe eighty-four important positions for copulation. Each position affects a different group of erotic centers, like a different pattern of musical notes, and each position, therefore, has a unique orgasmic effect. An expert will perform all eighty-four postures in three hours with the use of Vajroli to inflame his or her partner so thoroughly that no sex desire will arise again for months. There is no need; he or she is too full.
I know I said that the female should under no circumstances climb on top of the male. I stand by this statement as far as sex between ordinary people is concerned, but the situation is different, vastly different, when two people know Vajroli. Then it becomes a friendly competition. I start off with one posture and try to take her off guard and overwhelm her with the sensation. She will respond by changing my posture into a slightly different one, trying to get the upper hand. A rhythm of its own develops, a musical melody, and both of us begin to dance while we are still making love. There’s nothing like it; you just can’t imagine the feeling.
Suppose she tries to maneuver herself on top of me. If she succeeds she will gloat: “Ha, what sort of Shiva are you? Now I will be in control.” I can’t allow that, so as soon as she comes on top I will suddenly, effortlessly, and gracefully transform that posture into one in which I am in command. Then I can tell her, “You dare not try to control me; I am your controller!” And as I speak those words she will be converting that posture into another one more favorable to her.
When both partners have full knowledge of Vajroli there is mutual benefit. She releases a little of her secretion to him, just enough to lubricate his prostate; he releases just enough of his prostate fluid to rejuvenate her. Only if they want a child does he emit semen and only then does she permit it to enter the cervix. A fair exchange is no robbery. This is important from the karmic point of view, because if you suck up all the secretions from all your partners and take years off their lives, you are to blame for their misery and will have to pay them back someday.
Vajroli is not a joke. A man who uses full force Vajroli on an ordinary woman will cause her to bleed. She may even lose control over her sphincters and soil the bed. It can cause complete revulsion for sex, or it can create nymphomania. When a woman who knows Vajroli “milks” a man of his semen he discharges and discharges until he is empty and still must discharge. The tension becomes so great he cannot bear it. So this knowledge is not to be toyed with, lest you ruin yourself and others with you. When both partners know Vajroli, though, well, there is nothing like it in the world. You’ll forget all about sex except with that partner.
Vajroli is only the beginning. After Vajroli there are Rajjoli, Sahajoli, Amaroli, and Gaupya — but no one knows about Gaupya except Lord Shiva Himself. These techniques are very difficult to describe in words and can be practiced only when the two partners can leave their bodies at will. The Vedantins talk about “Atma krida, atma ratih, atma maithunam,” meaning the love play, eroticism, and sexual union of the Universal Soul, but they don’t understand the true meaning of it. What happens is that the male must enter the female’s body with his subtle body, and vice versa. Then the man will be able to feel the spasms his mate undergoes as each erogenous zone is ignited, and she can do the same thing in his body. They both thoroughly enjoy each other’s play before the final coitus occurs.
Vajroli is a mutual clashing, interaction, and union of two personalities into one. Shiva and Shakti merge together into Sadashiva; the proton and the electron reunite to form the neutron. Just as in physics such a union is associated with tremendous energy, the union of Vajroli is associated with awesome Shakti, which can be used for great spiritual advancements. It is the achievement of a lifetime.
Both partners must be thoroughly prepared for Vajroli, but preparation of the female is more important since females are naturally more passionate. A female can go into samadhi through this practice only when she forgets her body totally. If she retains even a slight interest in sex the intensity of Vajroli will magnify it so much that she will drag her man down and make him again conscious of his physical body. Or, if the man’s willpower is strong enough to prevent this, nothing will happen to him but she will develop a ravenous appetite for sex. This is why it is essential that you perfect Shiva Lata Mudra while you are learning to suck up water and all the rest with the genitals. Both partners must forget their sexuality entirely and their physical bodies as much as possible and self-identify totally with Bhairava and His Bhairavi.
There is no comparison between Vajroli and ordinary sex. Vajroli has nothing to do with friction and irritation. It actually creates harmony, because the movements are not random; they follow a definite set pattern. Also, the male never emits semen and the female does not ooze continuously, so neither partner’s aura is dissipated. In fact the two partners mutually increase each other’s auras by the effort at sadhana.
You can even take your Bhairavi into the smashan if you like and perform Shiva Lata Mudra or Vajroli with her there. Certain ethereal beings will be so irritated by your audacity that they will come and try to unnerve you. But never permit yourself to fear. You can gain control of Yakshinis in this way. But — and this is a very big but — if your Bhairavi is not absolutely firm mentally her mind will be dragged down into her body, and you will be dragged down along with her. And then you are done for. But if you can do it, it is the best possible sex, even better than copulating with a Yakshini after calling her into a corpse. This is why I say over and over and over again: If you want to do this sadhana you must have a superpartner; otherwise you’ll never be able to succeed and both of you will be ruined. I was very lucky that my Bhairavi was so expert; or perhaps I was just destined for it. If you cannot find a perfect partner it is better either to forget all about doing this sadhana or wait until you can locate an expert.
BHAIRAVI
Thus the question arises: where can you locate a Bhairava or Bhairavi and, hopefully, if you are accepted as a pupil, learn these techniques? Well, nowhere except in India. Even here only a handful know Vajroli. I do not teach everyone who comes to me because I can’t be sure they will not try to commercialize what they learn. I once taught a fellow to suck up water with the penis and what did he do? He went to Germany and became a big so-called swami. When I met him afterwards, he became very uneasy and said to me, “I hope you won’t let on….”
I replied, “Don’t worry, babu, your secret is safe with me.” Why expose him? Give him enough rope and he will hang himself eventually; why should I interfere? After that experience, though, I have become quite selective. In fact I have not yet found a worthy pupil.
Of course I myself was not a worthy pupil in the beginning. Once, just shortly after Smashan Tara came to me I saw a woman pass me in the street. What a beauty! I was for a moment overcome with lust. Then I heard Ma telling me, “Control yourself. Remember that she is mortal. She will get old and wrinkled one day, and then she will die and her beautiful body will decompose. Only her bones will remain. When you look at her see her not as she is now but as she will be eventually: a skeleton.”
From that day forward I forgot to look at people as they presently exist, and I started to try to look at all of them as skeletons, especially the pretty women, so that I could control my lust. It took me six years to make a thorough job of it.
No, the only way to learn Vajroli is to have an experienced partner who can make up for any deficiencies you might have. I think my partner, the Bhairavi who taught me, is the most experienced Bhairavi in India, which means in the world. As far as sex is concerned there is no one to beat her. When she came to me she looked like a fifteen-year-old girl, but she is much, much older than that. Death cannot come to take her until she herself desires it. She remains naked, but covers herself with her long matted locks, and she carries a trident, Shiva’s symbol.
Once I playfully asked her, “Why don’t you let me see your real form?” She showed me — and my God! it was horrible! I was nauseated by the sight: All her skin was wrinkled; her eyelids drooped down onto her cheeks, and she had to pick them up with her fingers in order to see me. She has become immortal through the use of mercury. Take one of her hairs and put it into a furnace of 1,000 degrees for one month and nothing whatsoever will happen to it. That is the power of mercury, the power of preservation.
And the way she taught me; none to beat her. I learned all the connections between the erogenous zones and the lunar days. She would use her mouth to demonstrate how her labia would look at each point in the process. Sometimes I would laugh at the way she would make faces, and she would get wild with me: “You old man, what do you know?” Imagine, she would call me “old man” even though I was a baby compared with her age.
In the early days when I knew nothing she guided me carefully. When I would become fatigued after hours of Vajroli and postures she would make me drink hot milk which had been medicated with mercury in a special way, and then I would be back to my old self, fighting fit. If my erection began to droop all she had to do was touch a certain nerve and woop! I would again become fully erect.
When she wanted to test my progress she would tighten her vaginal muscles and then tell me to penetrate her. My God! It was absolutely impossible; she could make her vagina as hard as wood. Once I must have become somewhat frivolous, and to teach me a lesson she let me penetrate her and then clamped down with her vaginal muscles. I thought my penis would be squeezed flat! Then she actually began to lift my body, gripping me by my penis with her vagina! And mind you, I weighed 210 pounds at that time. It felt as if my entire pubic region was being ripped from my body! She’s too good, that’s all I can say.
I got my Bhairavi thanks to Shyamananda Aghori. It happened like this. I was on a university trip to Hardwar with some of my friends. A little away from the city was an old cemetery in which no one was able to spend a single night alone; everyone who tried died. I don’t know what happened to my friends — perhaps something or someone affected their minds — but they dared me to spend a whole night there alone. I have never been able to ignore a challenge, so I agreed. I loaded up two hip flasks with whiskey, packed some snacks, and took my trusty Colt revolver. I was fond of hunting back then, and I had decided that some wild animal must be killing everyone who tried to spend the night there. My plan was to shoot it down, using myself as bait to attract it, and stop those stories once and for all.
Night had fallen by the time I reached the place. There was an immense stone image of Ma, and I could see that it would be the ideal place from which to get a bead on my adversary, whatever it might be. I settled down in between Her lotus feet and noticed one of the skulls that lay nearby. It was unusually broad, something you think of in terms of prehistoric man, and it was bleached absolutely white. I was sure it would crumble to powder when I touched it but, no, it was quite solid.
I began to eat and drink and sat fiddling with the safety catch on my revolver. As the night deepened and the hours rolled by I started to think the whole thing was just a hoax, when suddenly I heard a rustling from the vegetation near the temple. My senses had been sharpened by plenty of hunting. “Aha,” I said to myself, “it is a wild animal, and I’m going to get myself a nice trophy from tonight’s adventure.” At that time in my life I was completely wild because of doing so much Smashan Sadhana, and I believed in only one thing: kill or be killed. The blood lust had taken hold of me that night, with a good deal of help from the whiskey, and I sat waiting for the blighter to come into view.
After a bit I heard a low growl, which gradually came closer and closer, and before long I could see two eyes like burning coals and I knew it was a tiger. I thought to myself, “It’s all very clear now. This fellow has become a man-eater. A simple explanation for the whole mystery of this place.” I was just waiting for him to come into range since a revolver is only useful at close quarters, and you must get a clean shot at a tiger to drop him. If you don’t drop him with the first shot you may not live to regret it. I planned to shoot him right between the eyes, and the whole matter would be finished.
Closer and closer he came, and I was becoming more and more excited: When will he come into range so I can shoot him! I lifted the revolver and aimed it, and just as he came within about thirty yards of me I decided to pull the trigger — and my hand became useless. I just couldn’t move it. In that instant all my confidence deserted me. I suddenly realized that I would be killed by the tiger like all the rest. It was such a shock that I passed out.
When I awoke I was most surprised to be alive. The tiger was gone and in his place was an Aghori standing over me. I looked at him rather stupidly, I suppose, because he said, “Get up! Don’t worry, I’m not a tiger to eat you up! I called you here; that’s why you’ve come.” He told me to go down to the river and take a bath, and then he explained to me that I would have to come to the cemetery every night and perform a certain sadhana known as Sahasra Munda (Thousand Skulls). There was an immense heap of skulls nearby, of the prehistoric type I had seen earlier, which is why the place was called Munda Durga (Fortress of Skulls). With Shyamanandaji’s help I succeeded at that sadhana. As he said, “Anyone who wants to be an Aghori must do Munda Sadhana.” The only thing is, most do Munda Sadhana with five skulls: I did it with over 1,000.
After I completed that sadhana he told me, “Now I am going to give you my Bhairavi.” That’s how I got her, and, oh my, what she has taught me! I don’t think any other woman in the universe could have taught me so much.
Once my Guru Maharaj wanted me to accompany him to a certain locality near Nasik, but I flatly refused. I told him, “My Bhairavi is there, and if I go to meet her I will never return; I will remain with her forever because she will never allow me to leave. She will feed me mercury so that I can regain my youth and then we will practice Mudras together indefinitely. I will forget about everything else in the world, including you, so please do not insist.” He got wild, but I was adamant.
My relationship with my Bhairavi was such that I never wanted to leave her. I did not leave her willingly, in fact; I was forced to. I was ordered to return to the world and continue my work here. But even though we have been separated for many years now I have not forgotten her, and I will never forget her. No other female has ever been able to satisfy me even 1 percent as much as she could, and I doubt I’ll ever find any woman who will. Sexual satisfaction is the least she gave me, of course; our relationship was very different. A purely physical relationship can only be temporary; a merely mental relationship lasts not much longer, perhaps an entire lifetime. A spiritual relationship, though, is permanent, eternal, and that is all I value.
When I last visited America I talked to some Americans about ojas and Vajroli. I know that Americans are obsessed with sex and I wanted to try to impress upon them how little they really know about the subject. And I wanted to test them.
In this lifetime it is unlikely that any of them will locate a Bhairava or Bhairavi, so it will be impossible for them to learn Vajroli, or even Shiva Lata Mudra. I told them as much, in fact, just to see how they would react. Some of them had the attitude, “Well, this is very nice but it is not at all practical so we really cannot spend any time on it.” Some of them, I am sure, though no one admitted it to me, went directly home and tried out Lata Mudra and found out that it was indeed impossible to do without guidance. There might possibly be even one or two who would try the Mudra or Vajroli out with several partners and then convince themselves that they had achieved. They might even start to go around and hold seminars to teach others the half-baked knowledge they imagined they had learned. I know there are plenty of “Tantrics” in America doing this sort of thing, so it would not surprise me at all if someone tried to misuse this information.
I would have been happy if even one had had this attitude: “It seems unlikely that I will be able to learn this technique this time around, but compared to it ordinary sex is nothing! I am going to make a sincere effort to worship my deity in this life with the sincere intention that next time around or sometime later in the future Nature will teach me what I want to learn.’’
This is the correct attitude. No effort is ever wasted. What you do not complete in this lifetime you will most certainly complete later if you have a real desire to do so. The progression will be maintained, regardless of time. Time is no barrier at all. But if you are in a hurry for knowledge you will never obtain it. In my opinion, the best things in life are worth waiting for no matter how long that wait might be. This is why an Aghori loses his fear of death. He knows that even if he dies with something unfinished, Nature will be obligated to create the conditions for him to finish his sadhana in the future. Where will Nature go?
I don’t mean you should sit back and relax and say to yourself, “Why do any work now since there is no hope for success in this birth? I’ll wait until I am born in the appropriate situation and then I’ll see about doing penance.” With this attitude, which most self-proclaimed “good Hindus” suffer from, you will never succeed even after millions of births.
Besides, you don’t know your destiny; who knows what you are destined to achieve in this birth? An Aghori demands success now knowing full well that if it eludes him in this lifetime he will be able to continue later. He never slackens, though. Slackening shows the presence of residual traces of Maya in the personality: “Let me have one more little enjoyment and then I will renounce.” NO! If you want to enjoy, enjoy; if you are through with enjoyment, tired of the world’s deceptions, then renounce. Don’t try to mix enjoyment and renunciation together; it just won’t work. And once you renounce, be prepared to wait.