The inner reality by Paul Brunton

Author:Paul Brunton [Brunton, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Health & Fitness, PHILOSOPHY. PSYCHOLOGY, Yoga, Philosophy of mind
Publisher: Rider
Published: 1970-01-15T10:18:49.301000+00:00

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When one really has high aspirations then the quicker one obtains a sensible and self-disciplined adjustment of sex desire the better, for constant pre-occupation with any one bodily factor is not going to help one's mind become detached from the flesh and soar into a more ethereal region.

A person who is unfit for total renunciation and who is sex-starved is more likely to concentrate his thoughts on sex and how to obtain satisfaction of his sexual instincts than on spiritual uplift.

To make a fetish of physical chastity—to suffer the torments of suppression whilst secretly longing for the pleasures of the flesh, to thwart one's strong instincts, to dam the channels of one's vital energies, all these cases call for sublimation. These would-be ascetics often end in becoming obsessed by the very thing from

which they are trying to refrain. They begin to exhibit to the observant eye all those signs of frustration, neuroticism, and inhibition which inevitably develop where restraint does not arise perfectly naturally. Extreme fanaticism is abnormal and unnatural.

The monk who makes a fetish of celibacy to such an extent that he worships it and regards all those who are not in the monastic state as being inferior, that man has adopted a materialistic viewpoint of human nature. He is confounding people with their bodies.

You have to remember you are not the body, and therefore in the end nothing that you do with or by the body is going to affect your spiritual state drastically. You seek a spiritual consciousness. It is true nevertheless that altering bodily habits makes for an easier control of mental habits.

Nearer to the spirit is the mind, and so the mind is where the goal is more likely to be attained. If this be true, you see it is perfectly possible for one to live in the marriage state and yet through control of thought to achieve the goal. Perhaps it will be harder than the effort of the monk. The monk will have less to resist. Although it may be harder for the married man than for the monk to attain spiritual awareness, success can still be his, because there is no crime, there is no sin in sex intercourse per se. There is nothing in it but a perfectly natural function of the body. Let us not confuse the issues.

We need self-control but not self-torture. We need sexual restraint but not sexual extinction, just as we need the illumined use of the intellect and not its ascetic rejection.

We must find a middle ground between both ends of the question. To renounce the world, to turn one's back on it as an evil thing, has been assumed to be the only path to spirituality. This is exaggeration. To accept the world but to spiritualize one's existence in it is another path and one which can lead to identically the same goal.

We need a sensible medium between sex obsession and sex repression. We want life in its fullness for the Spirit is everywhere present, and not life in its narrowness as imposed by asceticism.

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