Uncategorized

Q: Someone told me that the Indian scriptures say if householder yogis only engage in sexual relations at night they are actually brahmacharis. Is this so?

I have come across this in some “scriptural” books myself more than once. Nevertheless, this statement is not only false, it is foul. Do not believe it. I have read the dharma shastras on the rules for the grihasta life and they are far more stringent I can assure you.

But since you mention “householder yogis,” let me assure you that all such talk is usually just empty air. Three men are held up as examples of “householder yogis” to the world: Sri Ramakrishna, his disciple Durgacharan Nag and Shyama Charan Lahiri Mahasaya. Let us look at their examples, which are holy indeed.

Sri Ramakrishna

Sri Ramakrishna was first of all a monk, a member of the Puri branch of the Swami Order. Ramakrishna was his monastic name.

His family and the owner of the Dakshineshwar Kali Temple decided that celibacy had made his brain overheated and that if his brahmacharya would be broken then he would be “normal.” So first of all, the owner of the temple took him to a house of prostitution in Calcutta and left him there until “it” would be done. When he went back he found Sri Ramakrishna seated in samadhi while being worshipped by the prostitutes who upbraided him for daring to attempt defilement of such a holy man.

His family had gotten him married for the same nefarious purpose, but the bride was a child at the time. So after the Calcutta failure it was decided to send Sarada Devi, his now-adult wife, to live with him in the temple and end his brahmacharya. What they did not know was her exalted spiritual status.

One night he asked her: “Have you come here to bring my mind down to the lower planes?” “Why would I?” she replied, and they lived together in unbroken virginity. He worshipped her as Kali and she worshipped him as Kali. After his mahasamadhi she carried on his work as a supreme jnani and yogeshwari. Read their biographies and their spiritual discourses, especially The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, and decide who in India or America are really householder yogis.

Continue reading

“That [knowledge], however, which is attached to one single effect as if it were all, and without reason, without a real purpose and small in significance, is declared to be tamasic” (Bhagavad Gita 18:22).

[This article is an excerpt from the article “Knowledge, Action, Doer and the Three Gunas” from the Bhagavad Gita for Awakening.]

Definition of tamas from A Brief Sanskrit Glossary: Dullness, inertia, folly, and ignorance. One of the three gunas.

Since the world of humanity is in the death-grip of tamas, we need to analyze this, for we have become so used to it that we often miss the awful implications in such a view.

• Attached to one single effect as if it were all.

This is a constant in modern society. People are absolute idolators of their mentally lazy clichés–whether social, political, religious, scientific, or personal. There is only one right way to do a thing, or to think, worship, eat, behave, etc., etc. “My way is the only way” is the fundamental principle. “All the ills of the world will vanish if everyone thinks and acts like me,” is the doctrine.

Often a single thing is chosen and harped on constantly, as if there is no wider picture. Simplistic is the watchword. Simple, lazy, and stupid–that sums it all up. A refusal to learn anything new is necessary for the maintenance of this tamasic condition.

• Without reason.

“The says it and I believe it!” The same with prophets, teachers, parents, and whoever has put a thumbprint in their brain. No need to think: they have been TOLD.

Continue reading