We have heard of people talking about celibacy as one of the requirements for spiritual progress. Please throw some light on that.
Celibacy helps to conserve energy. Spirituality is about uplifting the energy and pleasure depletes energy and leads you to inertia. This not only applies to celibacy but to the five senses also. When we overdo it, how exhausted one becomes. For example food - if you take little food you feel energetic and you can meditate, but if you eat too much, you do not feel energetic. You feel dull and feel like lying down. You feel a sort of inertia has overtaken you.
Similarly, sex can lead you to heavy inertia. Spirituality is against inertia of any sort, whether through food, or watching two movies consecutively, or TV.
Watching anything for too long can cause inertia in the brain. One never gets that bubbling enthusiasm of energy from over-indulging the senses. So, eating, touching, seeing or smelling, any of these done excessively can cause inertia and that is not congenial for spiritual advancement.
If you ask me, as a couple, if you should never have sex at all to move forward in the spiritual path, I say, that is not the case. It is not a hindrance when it is in moderation. In excess, it is a disaster. Suppression is also not needed. If you have that feeling and you are trying to suppress it, it is not natural and can create the same inertia.
As spiritual growth happens, celibacy is a spontaneous thing because you are already in a state of peace and you need not rub yourself against another body to get some experience. There is a natural outburst of energy inside of you and celibacy has happened. If you ask me personally, it is not something you practise with force, it is something that comes to you naturally and it happens to you. Either through age because as you progress in age, sex does not attract you as much as when you were a teenager. Or past life samskaras (impressions); if you have been a yogi in the past, it does not create the urge or taste in you. Or the third thing is, if you are moderating your intake of food, you are not indulgent, then also you can have a say over it.
Lust has created humungous problems in the world and many crimes have happened or are happening today because of uncontrolled lust. It has spoilt relationships between people also. One of the reasons for bitterness in the world is the lack of control over one self. With lack of spirituality, what happens? The intense joy or pleasure one experiences with your partner can turn bitter and cause much more heartbreak if there is no wisdom. This is what is happening all over, isn’t it? Someone has given you intense pleasure and if you have no wisdom, you will find them to be the cause of intense misery also. If you feel miserable, do not look at the cause, point at the one who has given you physical pleasure.
So, it is the wisdom that takes you away from misery. Observing the sensations within you, whether pain or pleasure brings a different view altogether about the entire phenomenon.
