The Yoga-Sutra on Continence (Brahmacharya)

The Yoga-Sutra contains 195 verses. They are short sentences. Yet it seeks to cover every important aspect of the quest for God-knowledge and liberation from suffering, the vastest realm of knowledge and, for the one who would conquer his own ego-mind, source of multifarious exterior dreams, the most abstruse.

Thus the Sutra tends to touch on topics once, and in the sparest way, and never repeat any matter. It is thus highly significant that continence (brahmacharya) is prescribed and cited explicitly in three separate verses of the Sutra. These arise not in one discussion but in three separate areas of the text. Then chastity can be said to be referenced indirectly an additional four times.

I place this material first in my commentary because, the truth is, no spiritual knowledge can be penetrated or grasped without continence. Moreover, this principle is where religion and spiritual knowledge have had their greatest collapse. By restoring understanding of this principle, beneficial religion will be restored to mankind. The Yoga-Sutra contains, in fact, the very essence of religion. This the outstanding, God-sent fact about it.

Now, the direct cites of continence in the Yoga-Sutra:

2:29

"Self-restraints, fixed observances, posture, regulation of breath, abstraction, concentration, contemplation, trance [samadhi] are the eight parts (of the self discipline of Yoga).

2:30

  Ahimsa-satyasteya-brahmacaryaparigaha yama.

"Vows of self-restraint comprise abstention from violence, falsehood, theft, incontinence and acquisitiveness."

I.K. Taimni Translation

The word brahmacarya appears. Modern dissemblers look for every imaginable pretext or post tex for turning brahmacharya to mean something other than celibacy. Respectable older translators did not have the temerity for such monkey-business. They translated it correctly as "continence." Continence is an old English word for male chastity and means nothing lost from the body; himself kept in. Though modern potato heads would like to creatively reassign the term to ideas that are non-sexual, broad, nebulous like "staying to your purpose" or "loving Brahman --- brahmacharya is indeed the direct Sanskrit word for sexual celibacy, and the only one. 

Celibacy is what brahmacharya means. Notice that the other self-restraints, in the verse above, relate to very definite acts. To steal something is a definite act. The Yoga-Sutra says 'don't perform the act of stealing.' To tell a lie is a particular act. The sutra says 'don't do that act.' To commit violence, also, is a specific act. The Sutra says 'don't do that harmful action.' But when arriving at brahmacharya  modernes and W.A.B.Y practitioners want brahmacharya -- Sanskrit's word for sexual celibacy and sexual continence -- to become something nebulous, non-specific, non-physical, not difficult, and far less fruitful. And of course, they want to continue to have their 'fun' in life. Such obscurations and dumbing-down attempts on brahmacharya -- and I see them written everywhere from "Wikipedia" to Twitsville, U.S.A. -- are callow chicanery of the inexperienced, the unadventurous, and the weak. And you can't get Yoga if you are unadventurous or weak. Doesn't every man bleed? Even monkeys in the zoo? Nobody said it was easy, but dissimulating the meaning of brahmacharya is simply modern degeneracy. It is an abandonment of the one thing that can assure progress in the task laid out by the Yoga-Sutra.

I would say, moreover, that of the four incontinence stands far above the rest as the most damaging. That is, the most damaging to yogic progress and yogic knowledge such referenced in the Yoga-Sutra and Sanatana Dharma generally. Incontinence destroys your interior. It destroys your power of concentration, or even the motivation to do things much less the most difficult act of meditation. It takes away the creative being within that is capable of interacting with the creative Being of purusha. It's not even in the same category as those others.In terms of its impact on the yogin's capacities, incontinence stands far above stealing and even tough doings that might be called violent. (Arjuna on the battlefield was involved in tough doings and seemed to do very well with the Lord, but he would have had nothing without brahmacharya.) As I show here, continence even gets three direct mentions in the Yoga-Sutra. Thus the dissimulation of modernes and attempt to hustle it into the wings is all the more deplorable.

The strict definition for brahmacharya for the male is no seminal emission. When you have that, you have brahmacharya and only then. It is only through brahmacharya that men can write worthwhile religious texts containing positive and regenerate spiritual knowledge. And it only through the non-loss of that biological and spiritual substance that the next verse has any meaning at all:

2:38

  Brahmacarya-pratisthayam virya-labhah.

"On being firmly established in sexual continence vigour is gained."

I.K. Taimni Translation

By this brahmacharya something definite is acquired. Most translators call it "energy" or "vigor." But note the original Sanskrit is virya. This virya, with its clear relationship to our English words virility and virtue, is not simple energy in the sense of physics -- like crass heat or electricity, aspects of mere natural elements. It is energy, but more. Our word virility implies manhood, fundamental virtue, and an essence both humanly beautiful and lofty.

Sexual debauchery (read: sexual discharge in the case of the male) in old European language was a loss of virtue. So virya refers to a fundamental virtue built up and now resident in a man.

A continent man, acquiring virya, has virility in the way we usually understand it, yes. But such virility has esoteric qualities. His interior has been made sacred and the pure creativity of the Purusha-Father is resident in him. Virya attained by chastity is virtue itself, intelligence, and an emanation of consciousness. Consecrated to God it is divine. It shows in the religious person as a radiance, attractiveness, and righteousness. That virya both strengthens the mind and develops it, gives power to the movement of his mind, and makes his mind a penetrator. Virya both strengthens, and sanctifies, the interior of the yogi so he can both cope with, and be suitable for, divine interaction.

Now listen to it again:

"By getting established in continence he attains virya."

The physical and spiritual quality called virya in a male is only acquired by non-loss of his creative substance by celibacy. This begins to be sublimated throughout all his tissues, his brain, and finally as a subtle substance that the yogis call ojas. It powers the mind, makes it strong and capable of concentration, and gives it penetrating power. The sexual energy is indeed a penetrating power, and the male can choose to either empty himself of mental power with many penetrating pelvic thrusts, or have a penetrating mind for yoga and every other attainment.

As the female does not suffer a loss of biological or cosmic material on the sex act but receives a gain from the male, the question arises: What are the implications of yogic continence for women? Do they gain from it or not? Are they fundamentally different vis-a-vis yoga or are her pathways to it unique? Let this suffice for the moment: Because the female perforce by nature can only have the loss of physical creative substance only once per month, women are already far more continent than the average male today. Which men are willing to climb onto the continence platform of even the average woman? Truly, men are the real "bleeders" today, and to an egregious extent beyond women, and bleeding something more valuable. I will explore this topic, and the questions it raises, more thoroughly later in this text, and the fact that women incline toward bhakti (devotional development) and service, while men taken naturally to austerities and meditation. Simply let it suffice for the moment for me to point out: Bhakti-Yoga is the highest yoga, is complete yoga, and through it a woman gets the power to receive whatever the male acquires by austerity and meditation. 

Now, the famously terse Yoga-Sutra, which rarely touches the same topic twice, has an unusual three direct listings for continence. Yet these are not the only ones! Chastity is also referenced indirectly another four times. The best of these is Verse 1:20, in the section describing the levels of samadhi. It lists the traits of those who attain the highest level of conscious awareness, nirvikalpa samadhi. Most commentators miss it, but the verse references continence, and in a highly significant context:

I:20

  Śraddhā-vīrya-smrti-samādhi-prajñā-pūrvaka itaresām.

"In others it [samadhi] is preceded by faith,
energy, memory, discrimination."

Dvivedi Translation

The verse says that those who attain to the higher stage of samadhi, the nirvikalpa state, have those four things. Commentators steadily miss the chastity message of this particular verse. What does "energy" mean here? Is it that a yogi gets energetic? Starts taking long hikes? Building sheds? Thus gets the highest samadhi? No. Is it that he meditates more intensely? Intensity of practice is significant and mentioned in another verse. But the kinetic word "energy" is not the kind of word we associate with meditation practice, which is a sedentary activity physically.The problem's solved by simply noting that the original Sanskrit word is, again,virya. We already know from verse2:38 that virya is obtained by getting established in continence. If "energy" wanted to be used, it would have been more correct to write "buildup of energy." Thus the verse is saying that those who attain the highest samadhi are those who have a buildup of virya from continence -- and the three other things.

I've never seen any commentator point to this in Verse 1:20, or even note the relative profusion of chastity cites in the Yoga-Sutra. The pre-eminent cause of western non-penetration of the Yoga-Sutra, and why they remain so far from samadhi and the attainments of both Christian and yogic saints, is nothing but the collapse of the chastity ideal once promulgated by Christianity. Now a 2nd indirect reference, in three sampled translations:

II:30

"From purity, distaste for his own body
and no intercourse with others."

Leggett

"From purity (arises) disgust for one's own body,
and non-intercourse with others."

Dvivedi

"From physical purity (arises) disgust for one's own body and disinclination to come in physical contact with it."

Taimni

Note: Are modern practitioners of yoguh hoping to become disgusted with their bodies, and those of others? Or quite the opposite?

As with many Sutra verses, the "non-intercourse" has more than one significance. It refers to both aversion to sexual intercourse, and aversion to interacting with other people generally. This verse refers to an earlier phase of yogic development. When a man first renounces, it is natural and inevitable that he comes to despise the thing that debauches him and makes him lose his inner light. The "charge" of lust submerged where it belongs and not distorting his mind, he also gets a more clear vision of the sensual world and the bodies. He finally sees clearly, as when a child, the animalistic, crude, and absurd aspects of sexuality. But later, the religious person in the higher state has neither attraction or aversion to anything, including the bodies. This is the 2nd verse indirectly listing the chastity imperative in spiritual development and God-knowledge. The last two indirect references are in Sutra 2:1 where tapas is mentioned, and 2:32 where purity is mentioned. Sexual or moral purity is one of the forms of purity, and one of the most significant ones for God-aspirants. After all, Brahman is pure. Brahman is the "pure consciousness, untouched, like virgin snow.  By making ourselves pure we are able to finally mix with the purity of Brahman. And there is no more significant purity, in these paths, as purification from lust. Then later, the mind itself. (Thus it is that God-seeking men love most anything that reminds them of purity because it reminds him of God: Whether an untouched newly fallen snow, wild untouched places of nature, the innocence of children, unbruised fruit, or a woman made as God made her with no mark or tattoo.) 

These are the four indirect references that the Yoga-Sutra makes to chastity.

Remember that the Yoga-Sutra arose out of Hinduism, that is,the Vedas and Upanishads. References to chastity (brahmacharya) are very abundant in the Upanishads!

Now commences a re-ordering of the verses of the Yoga-Sutra, with commentary, so that White Europeans, those of India, and those of other deserving Peoples, can well-understand them and regain religious knowledge.

  The Fundamental Path to God-Knowledge

Now In the bhakti-yoga called Christianity, the sat-guru Jesus Christ stated that love of God is the "greatest law" or most important principle for Christians. Since bhakti-yoga is nothing but a felt love-of-God which stills the mind and brings samadhi, it is 100 percent valid to call Christianity bhakti-yoga. Now, Christ says that the highest law is "to love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, and strength."

The fact is nobody can truly love what they do not know or what they have never experienced. One can begin to offer up love based on simple faith. But in human terms we cannot love much a thing that we do not actually know. We have much more love for things we actually know and experience. It is my impression that the average man who calls himself Christian today has palpable love for rock groups much more than for God. That is because he has not sought out -- and known -- God. God is still at the level of a mere concept for him. Thus it is that the "First Law" of Christianity must be to "seek the Lord your God." If we seek God, we can then experience God and finally have genuine love for God. To apply all one's mind to God (as in the words of Christ) is the most difficult of all endeavors. The mind is recalcitrant, the mind is fickle and changing, spreading out in all directions but God. Gathering up the whole mind toward God is also the very thing, the thing altogether, that the Yoga-Sutra teaches how to do. That is its very subject. Gathering up the whole being and directing it to God is the central subject of the Yoga-Sutra and nothing else.

Thus there is complete complementary and parity between Christianity and the Yoga-Sutra. It is also my belief that Jesus Christ spent his missing years in India and that this was His very study. This based on the many yoga-like things He said and also his siddhis, which are inherent to God-knowledge and the yogic path. The Yoga-Sutra is like the technical manual for enabling a man or woman to "love the Lord with all your mind, heart and strength" as Christ described, through coming to know God directly within. God is not located out in space or inert external matter. God is living right behind our own minds. The Yoga-Sutra teaches us how to dissolve the mind and see God, who is the source of mind and who gives us perception, behind it.