Excerpt from Paramahansa Yogananda's Discourse #27

This excerpt is from Yogananda's 1,500+ page commentary on the gospels - The Second Coming of Christ. Take it for what you will. There are some jewels in here. I found it very helpful to read and believe it to be the objective truth. There are more passages from the same text that I'll try and post later. The specific chapter and verses follow the commentary below.

"Jesus said that not only is the physical act of adultery sinful, but that, according to spiritual law, a lustful gaze involves the committing of adultery in the mind. It is a common occurrence, especially in modern permissive societies, for men and women to leer at each other with sensuous thoughts and yearning. This attraction seems to flatter the recipients, some of whom even attire themselves or adopt other ruses in order to draw that kind of admiration. It is not only sinful to bestow lustful glances, but it is equally wrong willfully to awaken sex thoughts in the opposite sex, and also to feel flattered by such attentions.

"According to human law, unless there is physical adultery, there is no cause for condemnation. Human law passes no judgement on lascivious mental behavior. But the Divine Law condemns mental adultery also, because without its advent, physical adultery would not be enacted

"The Hindu scriptures speak of the following ways of committing adultery (equally applicable to women as well as men):

1. To think lustfully of a woman, without the woman being present before the physical eyes.
2. To talk about a woman with lustful desire.
3. To touch a woman with lustful desire.
4. To gaze upon a woman with lustful desire.
5. To hold private intimate talks with a woman with the ultimate hope of physical union.
6. The act of physical union without the consecration of marriage.

"Sin requires a complex definition. It is not a transgression against an arbitrary code of behavior decreed by a whimsical God. The Creator made man a spiritual being, a soul endowed with an individualization of His own divine nature. He gave to the soul, evolved from its own Self, the instruments of a body and a mind with which to perceive and interact with the objects of a maya-manifested universe. The soul's mental and physical instruments come into being and are held in existence by specific lawful processes of God's creative principles. If man lives in perfect harmony with the machinations of these principles, he remains a spiritual being in charge of his body and mind. Sin is that which compromises that perfect self-mastery. It has its automatic negative effect to the degree of the influence of delusion within it - involving no condemnation of an irate God. Man's free will actions simply harmonize and strengthen the expressed essence of his soul perfection, or weaken and degrade it into mortal enslavement.

"Thus, how many ways there are to sin against natural law no living mortal knows. The category of sex is a particularly puzzling one. Unless the sex urge were given to man from within, by the process of evolution after the fall from Eden, he would not feel the desire. Since physical union is the law of propagation of the species, it should be treated with that regard.

"Animals cannot commit adultery, even though they are indiscriminate from the human standpoint, because their sexual engagements merely obey the nature-impelled instinct to procreate their species. They do not indulge in self-created sex thoughts.

"Man, being endowed with reason and free will, commits sin by adding his lascivious, insatiable, lustful thoughts to the instinct of procreation. According to spiritual law, therefore, to use the sexual instinct solely to gratify sensual desire is considered sinful, detrimental to man's godly image. A married man also commits sin, as pointed out by Jesus, if he thinks lustfully of his wife, whose feminine nature should be respectfully loved and regarded as God's motherly aspect.

"Healthful hunger can be appeased by using the sense of taste to select the right foods, but greed for food can never be satisfied and compounds its ill effects by choosing an unhealthful diet. Similarly, physical union for procreation is as nature intends, but indulgence is never appeased, and is destructive to health and the nervous system, disturbing the entire mental, neural, and spiritual faculties.

"The mind is single tracked when it becomes fixated on an impulse. Once it gets used to sex habits, it is very difficult to make it move in the elevating channels of meditation. Sex-addicted persons are very nervous and restless; their minds wander constantly on the plane of the senses, making it difficult to concentrate upon the inner peace that leads the consciousness to the all-intoxicating, ever new bliss of God-communion.

"The vital essence lost in physical union contains untold atomic units of lifetronic intelligence and energy; the loss of this power, due to indiscriminate excesses, is extremely harmful to spiritual development. It exacerbates the outflow of life force through the lowest subtle centers at the base of the spine, concentrating the consciousness on identification with the body and external sensory perceptions. When on is habituated to this state, no ascension of consciousness to the higher centers of spiritual realization and God-communion is possible. People who live on the sex plane with its momentary allurement and physical excitation cannot even imagine, much less desire to achieve, the incomparable bliss of Spirit in interiorized meditation. Yogis enhance their great spiritual power and realization by a natural, not suppressed, conservation of the vital essence, transmuting it into divine vibrations in meditation that awaken higher centers in the spine with their exalted states of consciousness.

"Speaking figuratively of how even looking at the opposite sex with impure thoughts arouses lust, Jesus said that it is better to lose an eye than that the whole bodily instrument be desecrated by evil - it is better to forgo illicit sensory indulgence than to lose the infinite unending joys of the soul's communion with spirit.

"Christ used a dramatic metaphor to emphasize that if the mind becomes enslaved by desires arising from any sensory perception ("eye") or sensory action ("hand") it profanes the divine soul-image within man, leaving him oblivious of God. Nothing in life, no matter how pleasurable, is of any value or lasting happiness if one remains ignorant of God. Without knowing Him, life becomes a "hell" of insecurity with unforeseen disasters and grievous troubles. It is better that man's misuse of the senses and his wrong actions "should perish" than to allow his passions to annihilate his entire happiness in Spirit.

"How thoughtlessly people give up the kingdom of immortal bliss for their material desires for name, fame, lustful gratification, possession, money. Christ decries that shortsighted investment of one's life; it is more "profitable for thee" to cast off whatsoever casts the happiness of one's true being into a "hell" of delusive soul-oblivion."


From Matthew 5:27-30 - "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery': But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell".

 

tfw I'm in the friendzone.

 

I feel ya..