The Vedic Worldview on Sexual Energy as a Manifestation Technique

The Vedic Worldview on Sexual Energy as a Manifestation Technique

[00:45] Harnessing

Welcome to my podcast, the Vedic Worldview. I’m Thom Knoles. Jai Guru Deva.

I hear a lot lately about these movements of people giving a… putting spiritual jello mold over masturbation and masturbatory practices in the name of spirituality. And sometimes they refer to it as harnessing, although I think they’re actually unleashing, rather than harnessing.

The Vedic worldview really on this is that sexuality is a highly-prized phenomenon, but it’s not considered to be a thing that involves release. If anything, when we want to practice with the potential power of sexuality, it would be to become a Brahmachari, meaning someone who intentionally practices the abstinence and the redirecting of the energy from the lower parts of the body where the genitalia are, through those practices that cause the energy to rise up, and the apana as it’s referred to in ayurveda.

And so letting that energy rise into the head and into the brain, rather than it being expended through the genitalia, is really the methodology that would be explored with regard to the use of sexual energy.

So when I hear about people going places and getting under blankets and masturbating, all in the name of sexuality, and that, in the name of spirituality, you’re going to be able to bring great things into manifestation. If it were true, then the world of teenage boys would be the greatest manifesting population on Earth, because as I hear it, teenage boys are just at it day and night under the blankets, and I don’t see the world of teenage boys as being all that manifesting.

People will often say, “But it’s what you have in your awareness at the time of the experience.”

And so the idea that then, orgasm itself, with some kind of signal event held in the awareness, is a means whereby you bring into effect some desire that you wish to manifest, I believe there’s no basis for it in anything I’ve read in the last 60 years in Vedic science.

It sounds like a very Californian sort of idea. Or maybe New York, New York, California, that kind of area. I don’t think we’d find very many members of the Shankaracharya tradition who would agree with it, and I don’t think it would be a practice that we would find anywhere except outside of the context of western, very western, European, American, and particularly certain pockets.

And so, it’ll be interesting to see if any of these people become great leaders in the world through masturbating with spiritual thoughts in their minds. I just don’t see the sense of it myself.

[05:47] Active-Ingredient Mentality

The idea that you’re harnessing something when all you’re doing actually is consciously deciding to release without any product of that release, there’s no shared experience being had with another human being, which is the whole purpose of sexuality, is to have shared experience with another human being.

This is why in the Vedic worldview, it’s not recommended for one to become an adept masturbator, because what one is doing is taking an experience out of context. To have a sexual experience that is not in any way a communing or unifying experience between two human beings, then there’s a bit of an active-ingredient mentality going on. Let me explain what I mean by that.

In the West we are obsessed with active ingredients, and so, during World War I when there were casualties that caused pain, when there were fevers that needed to be dealt with, there was one particular anti-febrile substance, known as willow bark. Still there today, if you know how to find it.

The ground-up bark of a willow tree has in it an analgesic, meaning pain-relieving quality. It also is anti-febrile, it reduces fever. Willow bark also is anti-inflammatory and reduces inflammation. If it’s taken as willow bark, that is to say, usually, a few tablespoons of it washed down with water, one can have that effect.

And one particular chemist out of the United States made a discovery during the period of World War I, what the active ingredient was in the willow bark that caused this all to happen, and it turned out to be an acid known as acetylsalicylic acid.

So acetylsalicylic acid is anti-febrile, it is anti-inflammatory. It’s a miracle drug, really. It is also analgesic and brings a modicum of pain relief. In some patients, even extreme pain relief can be attained with mere aspirin, but it has some major bad side effects.

Aspirin taken is very, very difficult on the kidneys and it can cause a hardening of the kidneys, and it also causes bleeding because it is anticoagulating. So if you are full of aspirin and you get in a car accident that causes a wound to occur, the likelihood that you’ll bleed to death is greater because you’ve been filled up with aspirin.

Aspirin’s anticoagulation power can be used to reduce clots in the blood, and cardiologists use it frequently to help stroke patients and people with myocardial infarctions.

But let’s look back at willow bark. Willow bark has none of the negative side effects. Willow bark has in it natural buffering agents. If you just take willow bark, then what happens is you don’t get the kidney failure, you don’t get the anticoagulation, you don’t get any of the negative side effects.

But nobody wants to take willow bark, they want the active ingredient. When we extract an active ingredient, we’re extracting specific information, but leaving wisdom behind. Extracting a specific experience.

[10:04] A Lack of Fundamental Fulfillment

Now, let’s apply this to human sexuality. People are fascinated with orgasm. I don’t really care about what you should be doing to make arrangements to have an orgasm. It’s supposed to be, from Nature’s perspective, part of a communing experience with another human being.

It may have a reproductive value as well, of course, but at least in the human, that’s not the only reason for it, because we do it extra-instinctually. We practice sexuality as a communing experience as human beings. Unlike most other animals that instinctually do it only during their monthly seasonal, reproductive period.

Human beings engage in sexuality in order to commune, and there’s obviously a heightened moment in it, but there’s an active ingredient, and what the active ingredient is, is the orgasmic aspect of it. And so when you can have the orgasm but not have to have the trouble of the relationship, you can have the orgasm but not have to deal with another human being.

You can have the orgasm, and just walk in, get the orgasm and walk out. Then that sounds really cool, but there are problems with it because it doesn’t bring fundamental fulfillment to the human heart and psyche. Then like all addictions, it has to be repeated, and it has to be repeated again and again and again and again because the seeker is seeking full-spectrum, spiritual, communal upliftment, but orgasm on its own doesn’t provide it.

It’s the buffering agents, the willow bark around the orgasm that is in fact intended. So, the great care to surrender preferences, which we have to do in aid of having any kind of sustained relationship, in which the celebration of communality can be had, which may involve sexuality, which then may involve an orgasmic experience.

[12:45] A Very Clever Marketing Idea

But taking the orgasm and turning it into the Holy Grail, then what we have is what we see in modern advertising. I saw one just the other day driving down through Kingman, Arizona, a picture of a woman in a very alluring, skimpy bikini, advertising a car wash, a truck wash for truckers to wash their trucks off the interstate.

And the headline said something like, as if the words were coming from her, “Why not come and have a bath with me? You know you want it.” And so some trucker driving down Interstate 40 in his truck is going to look at that and think, “There’s a dang possibility. If I go in there and get my truck washed, that gal’s going to be there.”

People sort of fall for this idea. This is dangling the active ingredient in front of people in order to sell services and wares and things like that. And it’s so transparent, but it seems to work because human beings have bought into this idea that orgasm is what it’s about.

So then I can imagine somebody saying, “Well, seeing as everybody really wants to have an orgasm, and if they don’t wanna have one right now, we can make ’em wanna have one by talking about it, then let’s turn this into a spiritual experience. We’re going to have an orgasm and make it a spiritual experience.

Whether you have a partner or you don’t have a partner, all you need is a blanket to cover you up so we don’t get arrested by the authorities because, in fact, it’s illegal to masturbate in public or in front of other people.”

It’s a very clever marketing idea, but in my exhaustive investigation of all of the Vedic literature, which I’m supposed to be a world expert on, I’ve never found any reference to it.

[15:05] Perpetually Orgasmic

What I have found references to is monastic people using the impulse of sexuality, not to suppress it, no, but to redirect that energy away from the genitalia and up into the brain, and more specifically into the sahasrara, the crown chakra, and into the chakshush, the third eye.

But this does not come about, in fact, if someone’s practicing that particular kind of technique, it is confounded by either, in the female, orgasmic, or in the male, ejaculatory release, it’s confounded.

And so then, the release that occurs, that kind of release version of orgasm, is something that should be reserved for communing.

In the monks, they take that energy and direct it upward. They do have an orgasmic experience. It’s referred to rather openly in the puja ceremony that’s done. Puja means a ceremony. A ceremony. 

The guru puja, which is done prior to someone learning Vedic Meditation, there’s a ceremony of gratitude done, and one of the lines in that ceremony is Bhavam Bhavani Sahitam Namami, which means Shiva and Mother Divine, locked into sexual congress, face to face, the supreme masculine and the supreme feminine in absolute oneness. And the implication is that it is orgasmic.

What this is saying is not sexuality. It’s saying that someone who is a great enlightened master is someone who’s experiencing that orgasmic pleasure in their consciousness without any release. There’s no release going on. They’re perpetually orgasmic.

And so, for people to wrap their head around that, but not orgasmic with the liberating of sexual fluids. The sexual fluids are all directed into the brain and into the higher chakras. There’s no release going on.

And so then, I think there’s a lot of wishful thinking involved in this, and I think there’s also some clever marketing, just a few steps above the clever marketing of the truck bath.

Everybody wants to have some kind of sexual experience. If we can give it a spiritual angle, “You know, you want it, come on in and get it and we’ll make sure you think it’s spiritual.”

[17:58] Transcendence is Everything

There’s another concept that’s conflated or entangled in all of this, the tentacles of this kind of thinking, Meditation on its own and transcendence is not enough. Meditation on its own and transcendence is not enough. We’ve gotta add some pizazz to it. Let’s get sexy. Let’s turn it into something other than transcendence.

And the fact is, transcendence is everything, because if properly we understand what we’re doing, then the thing to do is to increase the regularity of transcendence, to enforce the regularity of transcendence twice a day, expand the awareness, and have a deep understanding of the seven states of consciousness that will naturally unfold as a consequence of this. 

To give someone extraordinary human capability and unity consciousness rather than taking that Vedic knowledge and asking it to fit into the rather tawdry exploitation of sexual impulsivity of the West. to learn how to take that everyday tawdry experience and elevate human consciousness to the highest level.

[19:32] The Universe is Your Sugar Daddy

There’s a third thing, which I take issue with, and that is the idea of manifestation. “I’m going to manifest stuff.”

People who will say, “I needed a million dollars, so I listened to the recordings of Abraham and whatever their name is, and if I write myself a check for a million dollars in my own name and tape it on my mirror while I’m shaving in the morning, there I am shaving away looking at a check for a million dollars written to me by me. I grant myself permission to have a million dollars, then I’m going to get it.”

And this is the, as I refer to it, The Universe is your sugar daddy. All The Universe wants to know is what you really want. And all you’ve ever failed, the reason you don’t have what you really want is because you haven’t told The Universe what you really want, and The Universe is just there waiting to hear from you. So tell The Universe what you really want and you’ll get it. Manifest it.

I even have, I bought a cup, a coffee cup, I thought it was so hilarious, that had written on the side of it, Manifest that shit, written on the side of the coffee cup. I’ve got it there in my… sometimes I get it out just to have a good laugh.

I am the manifester. This is the tail trying to wag the dog, and this is a complete, topsy-turvy turnaround of what the actual Vedic mentality is. Universe, that’s the big You. That’s not The Universe. The Universe is not really our language.

[21:24] Desire is Secondary to Manifestation

Universal You, that aspect of you that you are growing into, becoming aware of through your meditation twice a day. Universal You is in fact already, right now, manifesting things for you that you’re not aware of. And the way that Universal You makes you aware of what’s already being manifested by It, capital I, It. The way Universe makes you aware of what’s being manifested for your individuality to partake of, is through causing you to desire that which is already manifesting.

You’re caused to desire. Desire is secondary to manifestation. Desire is not primary. Desire bubbles up to prepare you for what’s coming. And so it’s not your individuality letting The Universe know what kind of stuff you want.

Universe is causing what it’s already bringing into being. It’s causing that to become desirable to you. So when you get a desire, it’s not up to you to manifest the desire that The Universe doesn’t know about. “Universe doesn’t know about it. I know about it.” This is that mentality, that manifesting mentality.

“Universe doesn’t know about it. I know about it. I’m more intelligent than The Universe. I’m going to let The Universe know what I want, and The Universe is going to say, ‘Huh? Oh, that’s what you want. Alright. I thought you… all you had to ever do is tell me.’”

And then you are going to cause Universe to stop paying attention to all the galaxies rotating and the planets rotating on their axes and everything, and bring you the Ferrari. The sugar daddy universe. That’s not the way this thing works.

“It’s manifesting. I’m a manifester.” I hear people say to me in my introductory talks all the time, “Thom, I gotta learn how to manifest.”

And my answer is, “You’ve got to learn what’s being manifested already, because you don’t have to learn to manifest, you have to learn how to stop resisting what’s already being manifested for you. Without realizing it, Universe is manifesting for you already, that which is better than anything you can think of, but inadvertently you’re resisting it and preventing it from coming, by being stressed, and by thinking too much.

“So you need to learn how to stop thinking. You need to learn how to experience consciousness thought free. When you can do that, you unify with Universal intent and then it will dawn on you what it is that’s coming, and for you to minimize resistance to it. Allow it to come into being.”

It’s already happening. It’s happening from the Universe side down to the individuality side. It doesn’t happen from individuality to the Universe. Universe is in charge. Individuality is the recipient.

And so, we don’t have this, we don’t share with the world of would-be spiritualism, or spirituality, we don’t share that idea of, you have to be the manifester and you’ve gotta figure out techniques for getting what you want. That kind of idea is not actually in any way congruent with the Vedic worldview.

Vedic worldview is better than what you can think is coming. Trying to come. You’re resisting it. Learn how to meditate to minimize resistance, and it will all come to you.

Jai Guru Deva

[26:03] Q – What’s the relationship between creation energy and sexuality?

Could you elaborate more on the relationship between creation energy and sexuality?

[26:09] A – Enhanced Repertoire

Creation energy. What is that? Well, it is the nature of everything that’s going on constantly, and so it’s nothing isolated or anything different to the reality and nature of everything in every given moment of the Universe.

There’s always something coming into being. So for example, in the study of abiogenisis… abiogenisis means the science of how it is that atoms that conglomerate to make molecules, that assemble to make molecules, at a certain point of complexity, make the jump into being bios, meaning into being alive, a living thing.

Even if it’s a unicellular living thing, there has to be a jump from pure physics into bios, into something that’s alive. And the top scientists in the field of abiogenisis tell us it wasn’t that it happened once upon a time, it’s happening at all times, right now. There are molecules assembling right now, certainly in the Earth’s biosphere, that are assembling right now and making the jump from being mere physics to being bios, biological.

And so, this constant movement from less complex states, and let’s not confuse the word complex with complicated. Complex means multi-dimensional, multi-parts all in integration in a sophisticated way that has and generates a sophisticated outcome.

And the way we know sophisticated outcome is enhanced repertoire. Repertoire means how many things can the thing do, not just in sequence, but all at the same time, simultaneously.

Let’s take for example, a human nervous system. Let’s make it a woman who is pregnant and whose body is creating a human brain and a human immune system who, the woman is playing a piano and playing a Bach cantata brilliantly, and at the same time digesting her lunch, and at the same time, her immune system is successfully defeating COVID.

And so we have an immune system defeating an infectious disease, a brain and a body being built, a piano cantata being beautifully played, and lunch being digested, just to name about five things. And there’s probably five or 600 things we could name that that woman’s body is doing.

And so this amazing repertoire, not that the piano was played and that stopped, and then the baby’s brain was created a little bit more, and then that stopped. That’s sequential. Sequential is not simultaneous. This is simultaneous, concurrent, vast repertoire.

When we have simultaneous, concurrent, vast repertoire, we have sophistication, and everything in the physics world is moving toward that.

And so then, the idea that sexuality is the biggest and most phenomenal version of that that can be encapsulated by a human nervous system is actually a bit corny. Sexuality certainly is one of those functions.

[30:21] What Does Sexuality Mean?

And what does sexuality mean actually? When people say to me, “Oh, sexuality is it. Sexuality is everything.”

I’d like to ask them, “What do you mean by sexuality?”

Because sexuality, sex has to do with what kind of particular genitalia you’re equipped with. Or what are the predilections of your reproductive system. Or what is it you find attractive to you.

So if a honeybee finds nectar in a particular flower attractive, are we going to interpret that as sexuality? Or is it instinctual that the honeybee gathers nectar in order to take it back to the hive and make honey? What if it’s a drone bee? They don’t have any sexuality. They’re neuter. And so, can we say that, that’s sexuality?

This is a very human, sexually deprived way of looking at the world. When people are deprived of the gift of the mutual communal experience that’s supposed to go with sexuality, sexuality is a product of communality.

Having shared experience is what our real drive is. We want to have shared experience. Sexuality is one of the means whereby this can take place. It is one of the products of commonality, one of the products of unification.

It’s not the driver and the cause of everything. That idea that it’s the driver and the cause of everything comes from a consciousness state that is sexually frustrated. Sexually frustrated consciousness states that haven’t experienced sexuality in a broad spectrum experience of unification between one human and another human, they’re sexually frustrated.

And then sexuality is kind of pasted over every experience. “Oh, my toenail. I’m trimming my toenail. Oh God, that’s sexy. Oh, I’m plucking nose hairs out of my nose. Oh, that’s sexy. Oh, I’m eating a pancake. Oh my God. There’s something really sexy about this. Oh, I’m…”

This is a sexually-frustrated consciousness, and it’s a sexually-frustrated consciousness because it hasn’t yet experienced the role that sexuality plays as a communing device.

When that role is experienced in its entirety, sexuality just becomes one of many different tools that creative intelligence uses to allow communing to occur.

But the idea that sexuality is It, with a capital I, and everything else is just in orbit around that, this is a product of sexually frustrated consciousness. This interpretation.

I don’t advise people to have sexually-frustrated consciousness. I advise people to meditate and get rid of their stress, learn how to surrender preferences and be with other human beings. And if sexuality’s a part of the tool in the toolkit, use it.