The Completing Discourses of the 25-Year Revelation
– Table of Contents
THE COMPLETING DISCOURSES OF THE 25-YEAR REVELATION
The Seeming Conventionality of Right Sexual
Discipline
April 7, 1995
Throughout these gatherings, Beloved Adi Da Samraj
continued to address questions and “considerations”
regarding emotional-sexual practice and discipline. On any
given night, devotees would ask about own-body sexual Yoga,
the practices of true intimacy and celibacy (including the
possibility of sex-specific practices for celibates), the
technicalities of sexual “conscious exercise” and “sexual
communion”, the Oedipal “consideration”, and related issues
such as promiscuity, functional and stylistic limitations,
fidelity, puritanism, homosexuality vs. heterosexually, and
appropriate sexual-frequency. Beloved Adi Da often pointed
out that He had addressed all of these questions thoroughly
on may previous occasions, and yet, it still seemed as
though devotees lacked the clarity, understanding, and
responsiveness to the profound yet simple discipline of the
emotional-sexual life that was indicated by His exhaustive
“Consideration” of the matter
Thus, He persisted, and throughout the gatherings
(some of which included only a small number of devotees for
the sake of in-depth “Consideration”, and some of which-the
more general or summary evenings-included all residents and
retreatants), Beloved Adi Da freely engaged individual
devotees in direct dialogue about their emotional-sexual
attitudes, feelings, and presumptions, and their inhibitions
and desires. He made it clear lime and again that no
“Consideration” relative to the issue of sexuality (or any
other topic, for that matter) is, or ever can be, taboo in
the Way of the Heart.
It was only at the close of June, after fully
addressing every conceivable aspect of emotional-sexual
practice, that Beloved Adi Da presented in a single
conclusive statement the most basic sexual discipline for
all practitioners, which He summarized in a humorous
one-line admonition: “If you are involved in an intimacy,
you dont fool around, and if you are a celibate, you keep it
in your hand or your pants!” In other words, those who are
involved in sexually active intimate relationships must
confine their sexual activity to that relationship (for,
without the emotional stability and framework of a committed
relationship, sexual activity is inherently aberrating, as
Beloved Adi Da had emphasized earlier in the year), while
those who are either temporarily or permanently celibate
should not engage any sexual activity with another at all,
their right sexual practice being the own-body Yogic sexual
practice. (The own-body Yogic sexual practice may also be
engaged, as appropriate in any particular case, by those who
are sexually active in intimate relationship.)
On the surface, such a sexual discipline is hardly
“radical”, and it certainly was not news to Beloved Adi Das
devotees. This was exactly the same Instruction He had been
Giving for many years (except that it had taken more than
two decades for His devotees to become sufficiently free of
their puritanical cultural heritage to be willing to
“consider” a Yogic, and Spiritually auspicious, form of
masturbation). What was “radical” was Beloved Adi Das
absolute persistence in His dialogue with devotees until He
could sense that they had actually begun to undergo a mental
and emotional shift that would allow them to live this
sexual discipline based on right understanding, rather than
mere rote obedience.
The fact that such a discipline may appear
moralistic, and even puritanical, was addressed by Beloved
Bhagavan in an earlier gathering curing April. He described
how the wisdom and understanding behind such behavioral
agreements is generally lost in conventional society. As a
result, any social efforts toward behavioral enforcement
become life-negative and suppressive in their
effect.
DEVOTEE: Beloved, it seems one of the trickiest things
for us to handle is where the right discipline in Your
Company in behavioral terms actually matches what the
puritanical point of view is in behavioral terms. Because
then you can slide right back into the wrong point of view
for why we are doing it.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: And even those conventions that are just
passed on with a slap on the wrist, slap on the face – to
maintain it even those conventions have behind them a wisdom
tradition. But the wisdom tradition gets lost in the
generalizations of daily life and so it comes down to just
idealism or moralistic restrictions. And the only way it can
be justified among people commonly is to exhibit a
puritanical disposition to enforce it, you see. And that is
not right. That is equally aberrated as any kind of
arbitrary behavior.
So if there is true wisdom, right understanding, then
there are things to do, and things not to do – yamas and
niyamas. And with that understanding there are certain
things to do, and certain things you don’t do. And that is
just the way it is – because you understand, and not because
you have some egoic-based, puritanical, moralistic, merely
social disposition. So it turns out, as was just suggested,
that in emotional-sexual terms, celibates just remain
celibate. And those who are involved in emotional-sexual
intimacies don’t violate those intimacies. So in terms of
the outward appearance of behavior, it is in some sense like
the conventions that are commonly accepted in the world –
perhaps a little bit more liberal in some sense, and about
something profound as well. Nonetheless, it looks something
like it.
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