1.Does repression of sexual instinct is harmful in any way to mind & body. What should be a balanced view towards it ?

2.What measures you take and suggest to someone who is trying to get over it ?

3.My take on it is that unless there is some thing higher it is impossible to overcome it ? Please suggest if there are measures one can take irrespective of religion/ideologies he is following.

Thanks a lot for your guidance.

Transcription (edited) by- Keshavgopal Das

Question- Is repression of sexual instinct harmful in any way to mind and body? What should be a balanced view towards it? What measures can one take who is trying to get over it? My take on it is that unless there is something higher it is impossible to overcome it. Please suggest measures that one can take irrespective of religion and ideologies one is following.

Answer (short)-

• By nature, we are pleasure seeking entities and sex cannot fulfill that longing because pleasure derived from sex is temporary, illusory, and miserable.
• Sex desire should be regulated within the sacred bonds of marriage.
• The individual should strive for getting a higher taste through connection with God to go gradually beyond the desire. This can happen within the framework of marriage also.

Answer (long)-  The repression of sexual instinct is entirely natural and necessary for civilized human existence. Some amount of regulation, if it were not there, we could not have even a family existing if everyone started acting on any passing sexual desire that comes to mind. Then we cannot have any sanctity, for example, in relationship between son and mother, daughter and father, brother and sister or other relatives.

The idea that we can express every desire that comes in our mind is conducive to social chaos. That is why in all the religions and cultures in the world there has been a tradition of marriage which allows regulated and civilized expression for the sexual instinct.

Repression in the sense of just saying complete no-no to the desire for pleasure will constitute torture of oneself. We are pleasure seeking individuals and we need pleasure somewhere. You can read the article ‘What’s wrong with sex?’ on this website to fully understand how sexual instinct cannot satisfy our longing for pleasure because it is temporary, illusory, and miserable. Redirecting our desire for pleasure towards Krishna can help us to experience a higher happiness and thereby bring the sexual instinct purposely under control and gradually by spiritual advancement go beyond it completely.

Yes, we certainly need a higher taste to overcome sexual desire. Connection with God especially by chanting His holy name is a very practical and powerful way to prevent our mind of thoughts of sex and fix it on God by which we can experience a higher peace and pleasure.

A balanced view is that we cannot obviously express every sexual desire that comes in the mind; nobody in world can do that. Hiranyakashyipu, as described in Srimad Bhagvatam, tried to fulfill every desire that came to his mind, even then he was not satisfied. The nature of the desires is such that the more we feed them the stronger they grow. It is like putting fuel in fire. On the other hand, a total repression will make us feel tortured. In the Vedic culture those who are strongly inspired, inclined, and determined to become free from the sexual instinct, they take the path of renunciation (path of brahmacharis and sannyasis). They live in a particular kind of culture which is conducive for that and majority of others will enter into family life (path of grihasthas). In grihastha ashram the man and woman will regulate the sexual desire within sacred bonds of marriage. This regulation is not repression. Regulation if done within the bounds of marriage and it is accompanied by spiritual culture and activities that give us spiritual experience then the higher happiness will make one feel a sort of distaste and one will realize the futility and the emptiness of the promises of the sexual happiness the world bombards us with. Even within framework of marriage one can gradually go beyond the sex desire. Therefore, the balanced view is that we need to regulate the desire within the sacred bonds of marriage and get a higher taste through connection with God to go gradually beyond the desire.

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Paradoxically though, we don’t treasure life consistently. Though we are terrified about losing our life in one stroke to death, we don’t even notice losing our life gradually, moment-by-moment. We willingly, even eagerly, let so many of our moments be dissipated on trivialities and trinkets: trivialities such as gossip and trinkets such as a new gadget.

If we look back at our life, do we treasure the time we spend on such trivialities and trinkets? Rarely, if ever.

The times we cherish are usually the times when we were absorbed in something much bigger than ourselves – striving to actualize a noble aspiration or selflessly help someone. Those are the moments when we actually lived life. During the remaining time, we mostly just existed, watching as life happened to us.

Gita wisdom introduces us to the best cause to live for: love. Love becomes perennially joyful when directed towards an eternal object of love – God, Krishna. He is, as the Bhagavad-gita (14.04) indicates, the parent of all living beings, so by loving him, we also love everyone as members of the one universal family. All of us as souls have an original spiritual love for Krishna, a love that is now covered and misdirected by our worldly infatuations. We can revive that love by practicing bhakti-yoga.

Once we taste the fulfillment coming from bhakti-yoga, we realize that it marks is the beginning of our real life, life based on the reality of who we are – souls, beloved parts of Krishna. We realize, as the Bhagavad-gita (03.16) indicates, that life without any spiritual connection is a futile life, a life lost on forgettable petty pursuits.

Practicing bhakti-yoga doesn’t require us to renounce everything material, but to harmonize the material with the spiritual – to use our material resources in the service of Krishna and for the holistic welfare of everyone including ourselves.

Bhakti insights revise our understanding of what is worth fearing – not the ending of life because life will inevitably end at the material level. What is worth fearing is that life may never begin, that we may imprudently delay offering our love to Krishna and thereby block the beginning of our real life. The more we cultivate the healthy fear of missing real spiritual life, the faster that life will commence and continue. And it will continue eternally, because love for Krishna being spiritual continues beyond bodily destruction in the indestructible arena of divine love.

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You mentioned in you article on happiness through a tickling machine that all material pleasures are like physical sensations. Then what about the happiness we feel on hearing a joke? Is it real or false?

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Can you please explain in detail about origin, manifestation, transformation of sex desire. Let me put the question as below. Where is actually the sex desire. We understand from scriptures that the desire to enjoy separate from Krishna ( kama ) is the root of material existence and a sure characteristic of a conditioned soul.  Then it manifests as gross attraction for the body of opposite sex.

The confusion as below.

1. one species is attracted only to one’s own species of opposite gender.  so when does the soul identifies with a particular species. for example we had one article about ghosts. they dont have a gross body. still they think they are male/female humans and may try to fulfil their sex desire. But actually he does not have a gross body now. So if that soul is going to get a body of dog next time then when will he start having the desires’ of a dog.

2. there are some class of people called asexuals. I dont know if they really exist but dictionary definition is these are people who dont have any sexual attraction to both males and females. So I am not able to understand if this desire is a manifestation of the root desire to enjoy separate from Krishna which is a must characteritstic of a conditioned soul how can they be free from it without doing any spiritual practice.

So it looks like this desire has origin in the body/body type and not in the soul. Please explain how to understand the shastric statements that this is a disease of any conditioned soul.

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Transcript:

The temples often are the replicas of the cosmology of the universe. Just as in the Vedic cosmology there are fourteen planetary systems, and beyond these fourteen planetary systems is Vaikuntha. When a seeker is moving towards spiritual world, towards Vaikuntha, the abode of the Lord, he/she has to pass through the heavenly planets. These heavenly planets have many allurements of the pleasure, the seeker has to resist getting allured by these pleasures, and stay focused on the goal of Vaikuntha. If he/she gets attracted by these worldly pleasures, (they are worldly in the sense that there are materialistic pleasures in heavens also) then the seeker may deviate from attaining the spiritual abode. Similarly, many traditional temples have seven walls which indicate the seven planetary systems. These planetary systems are there, from the earth, upwards. Earth also is included in the count of seven and beyond these, there  are Vaikuntha planets. Hence, beyond the seven walls is the spiritual abode of the Lord. These temples’ architecture not only depicts cosmology of the universe but explicitly portrays  sensual material pleasures on their walls, which conveys the point that we do not have to get distracted by these temptations and should move forward single mindedly towards the Lord. To the uninformed vision these depictions may appear vulgar, but to the informed one they are replicas of the soul’s spiritual journey towards God. That is the first point and the primary understanding.

Another understanding is that, in the Vedic culture the aspect of sexuality is not rejected in the spiritual realm. Of course in the spiritual realm, the relationship between Radha and Krishna is entirely different from the sexuality which we know of in the material world. Srila Prabhupada, that’s why in several places, says that there is no thing as sex in the spiritual world. At the same time he also says that the idea of the multifaceted conjugal relationship with God is given in the Vedic scriptures and it is glorified by Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu as the highest of all relationships with God. This is because of the great intimacy it brings. Hence, although the relationship between Radha and Krishna is not like material sex, still there is male female duality in their relationship and they have a conjugal relationship. It is certainly not the sex as we know of in the material world, but still there is a romantic relationship between them and this may also be depicted in some architecture in the temple constructions. It is also depicted[Z1]  in the text like ‘Geet Govind’ by the famous poet Jaidev Goswami. In the  Gaudiya tradition also great Vaishnava authors and poets like Krishna Das Kaviraj Goswami in his books like  ‘Lilamrita’, and Raghunath Saraswati’s  ‘Sangeet Mathav’[Z2] , also describes intimate pastimes of the Lord with His devotees. Now in our modern times, our vision being so contaminated and agitated by sexuality that we generalize our sexual carnal tendencies on everyone else, including God. When ‘Geet Govind’ was written seven hundred or eight hundred years ago, it was very popular amongst people in general who used to sing it on a regular basis, and they never considered it objectionable. there is no record of…………………. after the ‘Geet Govind’ that pure and sacred, and God’s relationship with his devotees is pure and sacred and they are glorious in their own way[Z3] . So it was an object for veneration and glorification. But in modern times because of our sexually contaminated mind we see everything as sexually charged and that’s why we impute sexual actions even on the divine beings. This is very unfortunate. Srila Prabhupada would tell a story about a horse that was caught in a fire and it fearfully saw the bright yellow flame coming towards him, as the stable in which it was tied was burnt. Finally it maimed loudly. The owner came running and rescued it. After the stable was built again, it had a reddish yellowish paint and the horse was maiming violently. The owner could not understand what was happening. He called an expert, and the expert told him to change the color of the paint of the stable. When the change was done the horse became quiet. Hence, when there was no fire the horse was thinking it to be fire; it was mistaking the paint’s color to be fire and was screaming. Similarly, all of us has been scorched and tormented by the fire of lust. When we come to Krishna consciousness, by the chanting of Hare Krishna we will find that the fire of lust starts getting decreased and it slowly extinguishes. But then because we have this mental association of the mundane male female relationship, as soon as we see Radha Krishna, we also start screaming “why it is here? why it is here? what is this?”, like the horse maimed seeing the yellow paint. That’s why Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu comes in kaliyuga. He is Krishna himself and all His Gopi(cowherd damsels) associates come as males. They come as Goswamis and perform pastimes of the Sankirtana Mahayajya, dancing and singing glories of the lord. These pastimes are pure and sublime and there is no chance for anyone to misunderstand them as something immoral and mundane. Just as the horse becomes pacified when the shed is repainted, similarly the same associates and the same principles of love are exhibited in the pastimes of Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in a way in which we don’t misunderstand and agitate our minds. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in general discouraged the public recitation of exalted pastimes of Radha Krishna and in our Sampradaya acharyas have told all of us to strictly avoid listening to these pastimes because we are not pure enough. We are like the horse who would understand the paint to be the fire.

Bhakti Vinoda Thakura, Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakura and even Shila Prabhupada told us not to read these advanced books. In a similar manner the same principle, when we go to the temple and take darshan of the deities and not get ourselves looking at this architecture, now this is not to say that whatever architecture is there is depicting Radha Krishna. [Z4] Generally it depicts the apsaras in the heavenly planets, and it does not depict anything more particularly it does not depict Radha Krishna. But in case in some places there are depictions of Radha Krishna, this is how we need to understand it that it’s transcendental. We should not misunderstand them.

Beyond this there may be some depictions which are based on the kamasutras. We may have heard of the four ‘purusharthas’ dharma, artha, kama and moksha. Kama is one of the purusharthas, one of the purposes of life, there is religiosity, there is sense gratification, there is economic development, earning of wealth and then there is liberation. Kama is one of the purposes of life and how to fulfill one’s desires, material desires, is talked about in kama-shastras. Vatsyayan, who wrote the kama-shastras, mentions it very clearly in the kamasutras that this book talks about sense gratification but this is not the goal of life. This is just one stage and a person has to precede this with dharma. It has to be ultimately succeeded by moksha. But in modern times people don’t follow dharma and they hardly care for moksha. They just want kama and artha, i.e. they want sense gratification and they want money, that is their goal of life. Because of this some of the traditional depictions are misinterpreted and misunderstood and ……. from the original context.[Z5]  So yes there is restricted sexuality in the spiritual culture which is there in India, especially as it is taught in Krishna Consciousness culture. Now, we have to understand that Krishna Consciousness is not just giving us the Vedic culture; Krishna Consciousness is giving us the best and the topmost of Vedic culture. In the Vedic culture there is dharma, artha, kama, moksha and above moksha there is prema. Prema is the pancham purushartha; it is the fifth and the ultimate goal of life. This pancham purushartha which is the ultimate goal of life is being made available to us in Krishna Consciousness. Also because we are focusing on it we try to minimize our kama and artha and don’t do any mundane dharma, but we focus on paradharma, i.e. we submit to spiritual realization. One is the accelerated steep way and the second is the gradual slowly sloping upwards way. The slowly sloping upwards way takes the course of dharma, artha, kama which goes on for many many life times and gradually one develops the desire for moksha If a person is very fortunate then he/she may understand that beyond moksha there is prema. Hence, there (following four purusharthas) it takes many many life times to come to the ultimate perfection of life i.e. prema. Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, 7th chapter 19th verse, “bahunam janmanam ante jnanavan mam prapadyate”,   after many many lifetimes a person surrenders to me. But in Krishna Consciousness we have been given the highest, the quickest path to prema directly. For ascending to this quick path to prema, where we can attain a destination loftier than what was attained after many many lifetimes, by following the slower path, we can attain that loftier destination in one life, we have to pay a price and that price is strict regulation. The four regulative principles (no meat eating, no gambling, no intoxication and no illicit sex) are important for our spiritual advancement and in the Vedic tradition also there is regulation in sex, but there was accommodation recognizing that sense gratification is also one of the purusharthas, the goal of life, there was facility for indulgence in it too.  Still it was never divorced from the context of dharma and ultimate goal of moksha. Because it is being divorce now in our so called modern culture, it has to be strongly restricted and people have to be cautioned.

So far I have talked about three aspects of this question. Why there are erotic depictions? First is that it replicates the cosmology, second is on special occasions there is depiction of the pastimes of Radha and Krishna, which are entirely transcendental and we should not mistake them to be mundane and third is that in some cases there might be depiction of the progression of dharma, artha, kama and moksha.  Therefore coming to the temple is dharma, and there are scenes of artha and kama which are of huge prosperity of the kings and the sense gratification that they enjoyed, whether in heavens or in this world, and beyond that is moksha. So as one enters the temple more and more one feels free from material anxieties and material desires, which is in one sense similar to moksha and ultimately one enters the sanctum center of the temple, where one gets the darshan of the Lord. One feels attracted to the Lord, which is akin to attaining prema. Therefore, there is profound spiritual significance behind these depictions.

Unfortunately, when the Europeans and especially when the Christian evangelists came to India, they were the people who aggressively wanted to propagate their own religion, in the Victorian era of the British history.

Victorian era of the British history was characterized by high amount of sexual prudishness. Prudishness means that all forms of sexual impropriety are hid under the rug. Sexual immorality was not removed but no one talked about it and everybody was prudish, everybody was pointing out that is immoral, that is immoral, that is immoral. When these British evangelists came to India and looked at many temples in India, they were shocked from their moralistic point of view, as a temple is supposed to be a holy place and how these obscene seeming images are there in these holy places. This made them feel that this whole temple and the area around it are not holy. It is unholy and it is immoral. They had no understanding of the profound spiritual significance behind them nor did many of the Indians at that time. Especially those who were educated in English and who interacted with these Britishers, were largely disconnected from the living tradition that was there. This was because of the fact that the living traditions were in Sanskrit or in the vernacular, largely in Sanskrit, and the living tradition was not really educated in modern science. Many of the Sanskrit pundits did not know much about modern science and modern cosmology. Due to this the Indian educated class did not take them very seriously and because of it they had no answers to such questions which the evangelists asked them. They rather also started to feel that these are immoral. Instead, to think that they are immoral or improper, what we need to understand is that there is a profound spiritual significance underlying these depictions. Srila Prabhupada was aware of the current contemporary moral sensibilities as well as the criticisms that have been leveled, that’s why when Srila Prabhupada built temples he ensured that there were no such depictions because that would unnecessarily lead to misunderstanding in the common masses. Especially in kaliyuga, we don’t follow the succession of dharma, artha, kama and moksha; rather we, in Krishna Consciousness movement, focus primarily on cultivating prema by the mercy of Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Hence, those temples which have been build in the modern times by the followers of the authorized parampara system, they have tried to preempt such immoralist accusations by ensuring that the architecture to be primarily divine in the depiction of the Lord. The earlier architectures were also divine, but the divine was depicted in the progressive way and that is sometimes misunderstood by us. If we can understand the overall philosophical and cultural context then we will not feel any reservations or embarrassment or suspicion when we see such explicit architecture in the temples.

Thank you

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Short answer: No, because the only way to get over with temptation is by resistance, not indulgence. The peace that we get after indulgence is short-lived and deceptive; lasting peace comes only through resistance and transcendence.

Long answer:

It is true that our fight against various sensual temptations can gradually wear down our will to fight – especially when the temptations seem to keep returning endlessly like an enemy army with unending reserve forces.  At such times, our mind often starts inducing within us the disconcerting and deceptive feeling that our life would be much more peaceful if we just stopped fighting and simply gave in.

This feeling seems plausible, but it directly contradicts the insistent and persistent declaration of Gita wisdom. The Bhagavad-gita (2.70) states that only those who resist temptations attain peace – and never those who indulge in them. To grasp the rationale underlying this Gita statement, we need to look at the working of temptations from a long-term perspective. Indulgence pacifies temptation temporarily because it acts as food for temptation. Just as an enemy will stop attacking while eating, temptation also stops attacking us while feasting on our indulgence.

The Tragic Trap

But just as the enemy will, soon after the meal, resume the attack with increased strength, temptation, soon after the indulgence, resumes its attack on us with increased strength. Thus the policy of appeasing temptation leads to increased temptation, which in turn requires greater appeasement, which further strengthens the tug of temptation. Soon we find ourselves trapped in the mutually feeding cycle of temptation and indulgence. So after indulgence, we don’t get over with temptation; rather, temptation gets all over us.

Can we keep purchasing peace by appeasing temptation with indulgence whenever temptation attacks? No. Because of two reasons:

1. Immorality: Such an appeasement policy will soon make us immoral and even bestial because, the stronger temptation becomes by our continual appeasement, the more its demands will become increasingly immoral, outrageous and perverse.
2. Impossibility: Even after dragging us down into immorality, the demands of temptation will keep growing and will inevitably outgrow our capacity for appeasement, which is inescapably limited by our body’s finite capacity for indulgence. When our bodily capacity is exhausted, then indulgence becomes impossible, but temptation keeps goading us for more, thereby leaving us feeling tormented, enervated and frustrated.

Due to this vicious cycle of temptation and appeasement, people who start with a casual one-time drink sometimes unfortunately become addicted and ruined alcoholics. People who start with casual promiscuity sometimes tragically and horribly become serial rapists and even pedophiles. Of course, not all people who start on the road of appeasement with an initial indulgence end with such deadly perversions. But this stop somewhere-along-the-way to degradation doesn’t happen automatically; it happens because they take a conscious decision, at some point or the other, to stop appeasement. At a particular point, according to their own conceptions of civility or morality, they feel that they can’t allow any further self-degradation. So, they fight and resist the temptations that were increased after that initial indulgence. In essence, what saved the day for them was not appeasement, but confrontation.

The earlier, the better

So, all of us have to stop appeasement of temptation at some time or the other. What is the best time? The earlier, the better, because the later it is, the stronger the temptation is likely to have become due to having been fed by our past appeasement and the tougher it will be to stop appeasing it.

And the moment we say “No” to temptation, it will start attacking and tormenting us with all its might. If prior to this, we have fed temptation with a lot of indulgence, then to that extent our torment will be more severe. Thus, our initial indulgence makes it tougher, not easier, to give up the appeasement policy. A person who has never drunk finds himself rarely troubled by the temptation to drink to the same extent as a person who has drunk frequently or even occasionally.

Thus, winning the war against temptation may be tough, but losing it is tougher still in terms living with the consequences.

Of course, the sacred scriptures allow a certain amount of license for us to appease temptation within certain limits. But the Bhagavad-gita (3.34) warns us not to become attached even to this licensed indulgence because that attachment can at any moment drag us beyond the license. Srila Prabhupada writes in the purport to this verse, “As long as the material body is there, the necessities of the material body are allowed, but under rules and regulations. And yet, we should not rely upon the control of such allowances. One has to follow those rules and regulations, unattached to them, because practice of sense gratification under regulations may also lead one to go astray—as much as there is always the chance of an accident, even on the royal roads. Although they may be very carefully maintained, no one can guarantee that there will be no danger even on the safest road. The sense enjoyment spirit has been current a very long, long time, owing to material association. Therefore, in spite of regulated sense enjoyment, there is every chance of falling down; therefore any attachment for regulated sense enjoyment must also be avoided by all means.”

Srila Prabhupada sometimes gave an example to illustrate this point of sanctioned yet regulated indulgence: salt in food. If the food has no salt, then it lacks taste. Similarly, if our life has no material indulgence, then life becomes joyless. But if food contains primarily, or, worse still, exclusively, salt, then it becomes not only difficult to eat but also possibly dangerous to health. Similarly, if our life is motivated primarily, or, worse still, exclusively by worldly temptations, then life becomes not only difficult to manage but also dangerous for our overall well being – not just spiritually, but also materially.

That’s why, the Bhagavad-gita (3.41) urges us to regulate temptation as early as possible. And, to help us succeed in this challenging call, it equips us with abundant intellectual arsenal and arousing devotional motivation. It gives us a systematic philosophical understanding of our spiritual identity and the superiority of spiritual happiness. It also provides us with the revelation of a lovable and loving God, Krishna, whose devotional remembrance and service can fulfill our heart’s ultimate longings for happiness.

When we are thus intellectually and devotionally empowered, and, if we keep fighting and rejecting temptation, no matter how tough it seems, then even if it screams menacingly at first, over a period of time it will become weak and docile due to being starved of its essential food of indulgence. And then we will be free from the torment – forever.

That’s why losing the war against temptation and living with its consequences of lifelong ever-increasing torment is far tougher than fighting the war, empowering ourselves with Krishna consciousness to turn the tables in our favor and then gradually relishing the relief and freedom that comes from the decline and disappearance of temptation.

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Many a times prji some dirty images on billboards or even some beautiful faces on street engulf the mind with all propositions to satisfy the cravings within. They either force one to look at them or force one to contemplate them. The hallunicatory effect seems to last for may days before the urge to gratify subsides. My question is prji that when mind is clouded all over what practical steps could be taken to get relieved from it?

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Why is it that the appetite for having sex is very strong than any other sense gratification? Why does it requires a great impetus to control than required by any other sense gratification?

Transcription (edited) by- Keshavgopal Das

Question- Why is it that appetite for sex is very strong, stronger than any other sense gratification? Why does it require greater impetus to control than by any other sense gratification?

Answer (short)-

• Sex is an act that offers pleasure to practically all the senses of the body.
• It also gives us the feeling of being a controller and creator like God.
• By developing higher pleasure of service to Krishna the lower pleasure of sex can be driven away.

Answer (long)-  It is because sex is an activity that offers pleasure to all our senses and not just one or two of the senses. In a sexual act all the bodily senses are involved in some way. The eyes look at the form, the ears hear the sweet sound, the sense of smell is used (people use perfumes), the sense of touch is used, and there is use of tongue also.

However, this explanation is from material point of view.

From spiritual point of view, the soul has come to the material world to enjoy separate from God, and not just enjoy separate from Him, but also by imitating Him. There are various ways in which soul tries to imitate God. God is the controller so we try to become controller in the world. God is the supreme controller but we are tiny and temporary controllers. God is the creator and we try to imitate Him by becoming the creator.

When we eat food we are not becoming creator in any way. We are enjoying but not becoming a creator. Whereas in the pleasure of sex we try to imitate God by taking on His role as the creator. Through sexual activity we procreate and make a life apparently.  Although the soul is eternal but through our procreative process we help create a body and get the soul into the body. We think that we are the creators.

Similarly, during the sexual intercourse, the person gets a sense of control over the other person. The sexual act involves us imitating God not just as an enjoyer but as the creator as well as the controller.

If we turn towards Krishna and try to serve Him, we can get greater happiness by assisting and participating in His pastimes than by defying Him or imitating Him. Once we experience that higher pleasure the drives of the lower pleasure gradually subside.

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Answer Podcast

Transcription

How can sex desire be controlled? Why is it so difficult to control?

I will answer the first question first, sex desire is so difficult to control, because all of us are pleasure seeking, and sex promises the greatest pleasure to us and that’s why we are pleasure hungry and if someone offers to give us pleasure , it is very difficult to resist that. So, we need to find a higher source of happiness if we want to become free from sex desire, simply by saying no no no to that desire, we will simply be torturing ourself.in fact y the processes of bhakti is not so much about saying no as must it is about saying yes, saying yes to a higher happiness and thereby saying automatic no to the lower happiness. BG 2:61(verse needs to be checked ) Krishna says the same thing, that our ability to say no to the lower temptations will become steady and stable only when we connect with the higher happiness, param dirhtva nivartate, so to be able to control the sex desire the first thing we need to understand is that , sex pleasure is not what it promises to be, although it promises that we will get a lot of pleasure from sexual enjoyment, the actual enjoyment is very fleeting, you can refer to the article ” what is wrong with sex” for a detail understanding, but briefly, the bodies capacity to enjoy is limited, inescapably, no matter how health or how sexually hyperactive a person is, the hyperactive part is only the imagination, the bodily capacity for sex cannot be expanded, no matter how much our imagination is expanded. So a person may fantasize about enjoyment of sexual pleasure of days and months and years together, but the actual experience of sex ends within a few minutes. because the once the body’s capacity to enjoy to exhausted, there is nothing more that a person can do. So the body’s capacity to enjoy actually depends on the secretion of certain hormones and excretion of certain fluids and once that is exhausted, then no matter how tempting the sex object , how alluring the sexual pleasure, one cannot enjoy. So the over glamorization of sex, as a source of constant or unending pleasure, as it is done in the movies and the media today, is a colossal hoax, it is not just some religious dogma to call all this a colossal hoax , it is a practical reality. Even the people who are portrayed sometime in movies as enjoying for hours, cannot enjoy to hours like continuously. The body’s capacity gets exhausted and it has to be rested and renewed, So even when we renew the capacity of the body to enjoy, every renewal offers only a few moments, a few minutes of enjoyment, and that can never satisfy us. Our desire for happiness, our longing for happiness is permanent, we want to be constantly happy, but sex can never offer us constant happiness, it can offer us happiness only for a few moments, and nothing in the world can change this reality, so if we can calmly deliberate on this and convince ourselves that this is the truth, this is what is the scriptures say, Shrila Prahalad maharaj in the seventh canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, when he is offering prayers to Lord Narasimha deva, talks about the nature of worldly pleasures , centered around sex. Srimad Bhagavatam 7:9:25 kutrāśiṣaḥ śruti-sukhā mṛgatṛṣṇi-rūpāḥ,  kvedaṁ kalevaram aśeṣa-rujāṁ virohaḥ, nirvidyate na tu jano yad apīti vidvān,  kāmānalaṁ madhu-lavaiḥ śamayan durāpaiḥ. Prahalad maharaj is saying ” O Lord what pleasure can I ask in this world, ashis is benediction, benediction for happiness, what can I ask from you? why? because all this pleasure in this world is shruti sukh, shruti here does not refer to scriptures, it refers to the worldly gossip that we hear, so every body is talking about sexual pleasure, and people keep hearing about it, sruti sukha, and we also see it , and while seeing it is like mrgatrisni rupah, it is like mirage. a pleasure that is visible but never experienceable. never experienceable in terms of the glamour and the size and the magnitude that is associated with it. The promise is gigantic and the actual pleasure is pathetically meager , it is heartbreakingly brief. So he says “my dear Lord , when everything in this world is like this then what benediction may I ask form you “? somebody may say “Ok I still have a body , even if the pleasure is for few moments, i can keeping enjoying those few moments again and again through out my life. He says kvedaṁ kalevaram aśeṣa-rujāṁ virohaḥ this body is breading ground for unlimited of diseases and these bodily diseases sap and drain and terminate the body’s capacity to enjoy, and then he also sympathizes with our situation by saying ” nirvidyate na tu jano yad apīti vidvān instead to knowing how to get rid of these sensual desires, although we know that the pleasure is temporary, it is very difficult to give it up . why ? because kāmānalaṁ madhu-lavaiḥ śamayan durāpaiḥ. the lust burns like the fire in the heart, but there is madhu lavaih , there is drop of honey that is intoxicating, and that is very difficult to obtain on one side, but on the other side it is very difficult to abandon. that fantasy and that pursuit. so we have to philosophically and logically and intelligently have to contemplate on the true nature of sexual pleasure, whenever the mind starts fantasying, we have to ask ourselves , rather we have to ask our mind, how much and how long. even if I satisfy your desire O foolish mind, how much can I enjoy? , the quantity is pathetically meager, and how long can I enjoy, it’s just for a few moments, So if we look at it logically we spend hours and hours and months and even years hankering for a pleasure that lasts for a few moments. where is the intelligence in that ? we long for something , for years and years and years together at times, and what we get is for a few moments. It’s like somebody working to become engineer for four years , and at the end of it , he is given the degree of engineering for four minutes, here the engineer for four minutes and after that the degree is taken away, So it is the worst of all bargains, so its just not bad bargain, but ludicrously bad bargain, similarly, if you objectively think about it, the time we spend in hankering for sexual pleasure, and the time that actually a person enjoys is hugely disproportionate, we hanker for hours and years and the pleasure ends in minutes and sometimes in moments. So therefore if we thus contemplate and convince ourselves that actually the happiness that is there in this , is not worth it, so in this particular answer I am not analysing that this is sexual pleasure from the point of view of its sinfulness or its causing us diseases and it causing us karmic suffering, that is also ultimate way to answering it, but here we are focusing purely on logical perspective, even if somebody does not believe that there is low of karma and there is suffering and there is punishment for sinful activity, even from the worldly logical perspective, the pleasure of sex actually does not make sense, it saps so much of our mental energy and at the end it delivers so little, now of course the power of the illusion of the mind is so great, that , that hankering and that craving which is actually a form of torture, is also glorified , as if it is exiting and thrilling and it is something which is joyful. It is not joyful , it is torture. Krishna calls the hankering for lust as fire, ‘Prahalad Maharaj uses in this verse the fire of lust, and similarly lord Krishna says that it is fire that can never get extinguished. So even the materialistic people understand that eh hankering for the sex is like fire, there are movie songs which says savan jo aag lagay, that he fire that is burnt in our heart , triggered in our heart, that the seasons, stimulate our hormones, they also understand that it is fire, but they feel that by indulgence, the fire will be quenched. but indulgence does not quench the fire, it aggravates the fire, because our desire is so great and the enjoyment is so little that we are compulsively pushed towards future enjoyment in the home that one time the enjoyment will live up to its promise, but the enjoyment can never live up to its promise because the body’s capacity to enjoy is permanent limites, no matter how much our mind fantasizes no matter how much a person tries to search for external more and more attractive sense objects for enjoyment, still , nobody can change the body’s capacity to enjoy .so once we soberly contemplate on this point that sense gratification through sex is not going to make me happy, then we can begin to look for something else, look for something higher, that’s why Lord Krishna says in 3:43 evaṁ buddheḥ paraṁ buddhvā, saṁstabhyātmānam ātmanā, jahi śatruṁ mahā-bāho, kāma-rūpaṁ durāsadam. with your intelligence understand you are worthy for something higher don’t search for something lower bodily pleasure, and of course we need to keep reminding ourselves again and again because our mind has got already got so many fantasizes from the past, from either from our past indulgences or at least from our past imaginations. so at times we may be able to convince our selves by rational logical analysis of the futility of sexual enjoyment, but again the mind will overpower and it will drag us towards the same enjoyment. So we have to keep refreshing our memory, keep reinstalling our intelligence as our decision maker , and not our mind as decision maker, Shrila Prabhupada explains the functions of the intelligence very beautifully, he says there is thought, there is thinking, then there is feeling, then thee is willing and then there is acting. So the purpose of intelligence is to stop the thinking from becoming the acting. Because of our past conditioning , it is difficult for us to no think of sex at all, but when the thoughts come in, rather than acting on those thoughts, by letting thoughts grow into feeling, then into willings and then into actions, at that time, we have to use our intelligence, ” yes the thought may come, but it is worth less thought, it is not going to make me happy, Shrila Prabhupada says that intelligence means to kill the thoughts before they become actions. So the will to kill will come by our intellectual conviction. and this intellectual conviction can come not only by our analysis bulo also by our purification, if we are living a life in the mode of passion, where we are letting ourselves surrounded and bombarded by sexual temptations and pleasures, then we can’t sustain this intellectual conviction for long. That’s why along with this intellectual conviction m we also have to try to minimise the external temptations that we have. so lust attacks us externally and internally, so internally we fight it firstly by intellectual conviction, and externally we fight it by minimizing the provocating situations and temptations that may come to us, we cannot eliminate them but we can surely minimize them by not putting ourselves into tempting situations by creating obstacles between us and those temptations. So if we have a weakness for surfing to sites that tempt and aggravate our desires , then we need to have some internet filters or we need to have some guard, parental control , something like that, which will prevent us from acting on our desires.so the whole modus aparandy of illussion of maya , is that it attacks by ambush, the thought comes and before we know , the thought has gone into feeling, it has gone into willing, and it has becoem action, so at internal level, we try to use our intelligence for not let the thought not go to the level of willing, but at a external level, even if we will to do something wrong, if we have created external obsticals for converting the willing into acting, then we are protected, atleast for some time, and that protection for some time gradually enables us to for us to regain and restore our intelligence, Soin western society and unfortunately now in India also, as it is westernizing, when the sexual morality is not considered not at all important and promosquity is allowed to become rampent, then, the time difference between willing and acting is not enough for a person to get his intelligence be trigerred and activated once again, but if a person is in a protected invriornment, either in a married situation, or the association of those who are spiritually minded and are also tryig to follow similar priniciples, then even if our desires abduct our consciousness and they move us towards willing, we can’t act because there is not much option, and in the intervening period, that comes because there is no easy facility for willing to become acting, or intelligence can get restored, so basically this is all from the point of view of avoiding the temptations of sexual desires, but just saying no is not enough, because we are essentially plesure seaking, and that is why we need into say yes to Krishna. so if we learn to chant our rounds every day attentively, we may not find chanting pleasurable on a daily basis , but chanting is actually connecting us with Krishna who is supremely pleasurable, so the more we connect ourselves with Krishna , the more we become cured spiritually, so the nectar of instructions use the example of jaundice, in the jaundice condition, a person may not taste a sweet as sweet, but as he keeps taking the sugar cane juice, his gets cured and he starts relishing the taste of the sweetness, similarly if we keep chanting the holy names regularly, we are getting cured and gradually we will start experiencing higher pleasure more and more. and then the desire for lower pleasure will become subsided. but essentially we have to be convinced intellectually so that we can take shelter of Krishna, because , to give up sex desire is not difficult, but to get the desire to give up sex desire is difficult. why ? because the promise is so alluring that we don’t feel like giving it up. but if we convince ourselves intellectually and then connect ourselves with Krishna so that we can experience the higher happiness, then, we can get the desire to give up that desire for sex. So we have to find out within our Krishna consciousness, what can be our emergency source of spiritual shelter and pleasure, emergency source of spiritual shelter and pleasure means, that when material pleasures starts tempting us, at that time we need to be able to experience spiritual pleasure immediately, so for some of us it may be through kirtans, for some of us it may be through reciting some verses, for some of us it may be through just praying or taking darshan of our favourite deities, for some of us it may be by reading some scriptural passages, and for some of us it may be listening some of the class, what ever it may be, it is a war and we have to see which weapon works for us, every one of us have an individual personal conditioning , so the principle of remembering of Krishna is constant, but which manifestation of remembrance of Krishna whether it may be deity or scripture or holy name or verse which will strengthen us, we will have to find out individually, and we take shelter of that so whenever we feel tempted, we immediately take shelter of that higher happiness and by the gradually the mind will get subsided, the mind will subside, so it may not happen over night, but it will happen. So we need to keep ourselves spiritually connected. and when we keep ourselves spiritually connected, we will be able to overcome the material desires and move onwards towards spiritual happiness. and of course the whole processes is not mechanical, it is devotional, it is not just our intellectual conviction and determination that will transform us, it is our prayerful beseechment, begging into Krishna and his bestowal of mercy , that will help us to become free from the jail of sexual desires. Sex is not bad, sex is a way by which we can bring a new life into the world, but over obsession with sex can become mental prison for us, a mental jail, by which we don’t have the facility to think of anything else in a focused way. So we need Krishna’s mercy and we get Krishna’s mercy when we ask for it, and we ask for it by seriously contemplating on the message that He has given in the scriptures and by seriously taking the shelter of the sources of spiritual happiness that He has offered us , by these two things we will be able to gradually overcome it, and we will be able to come to a stage where the desire will not be so troublesome. Basically in our battle for sext=ual desires we will go through four states, one is helpless defeat, one person will feel it is impossible, how can one live without sex, one does not even think of fighting, but beyond that, once we start understanding that there is a higher happiness and there is something seriously farcical, false about this hype around this sexual happiness then one starts fighting against it, Second stage is struggle and defeat, we try to fight and we are not able to fight, we do not succeed, and then if we keep persisting, and if we keep pursuing, we come next stage of struggle and success, so at this stage also we have to fight against the mind and it will take us all that we have, we will have to use elure intelligence, all our conscious, all our devotion, but we will be able to fight it off, and over period of time, we will come to the level of effortless success. and so at that stage the temptation won’t trouble us, that is of course is a long way and all of us have a long way to get to that stage, but atleast we can hope to go from struggle and defeat to struggle and success, and what will help us to achieve that is that when we strengthen our intelligence and weaken our mind, we weaken our mind by not letting it fantasize further either by internally dwelling on the sexual thoughts or by externally provoking it by temptations, and we strengthen our intelligence by serious contemplation on scripture and on the logical futility of sexual enjoyment and we strengthen our intelligence further by connecting it with Krishna, by giving ourselves the experience of spiritual happiness, then , it is like weighing balance, so the mind is so strong that we get pulled in that direction, but gradually as we increase the weight to the side of the intelligence, by both study of scripture and by prayerful remembrance of Krishna, then gradually the two sides become level, and gradually as we keep strengthening intelligence more and more , both by contemplation of scripture, and by remembrance of Krishna and spiritual happiness thereof, then the scales will change and gradually the intelligence side will become heavier, and then we will be able to fight off the mind, So we may feel it is impossible right now to combat sexual desire, but there is no need to be discourages, because everyday that we are chanting and everyday we are studying scriptures, we are strengthening our intelligence, so as we strengthen our intelligence, we have all reasons to be hopeful that we will be able to fight it. and now of course we al strengthen our mind by fantasizing and by contemplating on sexual images and sexual objects then we will make our own fight more difficult. so if we starve our mind and feel our intelligence then the struggle will be lesser and the success will be faster. We can of course pray to Krishna and He will can diametrically and dramatically and rapidly changes the course in one moment. so we have to ask for His mercy and have faith and patience, and gradually the desire can be controlled.

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