Nikolai1

It is a fact that celibacy is associated with high spiritual development. This is usually explained in one of two ways. 1 Celibacy as cause. The aspirant is consciously seeking methods to improve himself. He observes the celibacy of the sage, and assumes that emulation will result in the same outcome. He is conscious of a need to be celibate and therefore interprets temptation as a battle of will; the yielding to temptation a failure. Eventually his will dominates,he is steadily celibate, and lives a life of peace. 2) Celibacy as effect The aspirant does not identify the celibacy of the saint as a relevant feature of his saintliness. He therefore attaches no spiritual significance to his own sexual needs. Other methods, for example, meditation are consciously followed and struggled with. As his peace and bliss deepens he is left with no need for a transitory sexual thrill. His will to seek out sex has atrophied. He is therefore celibate. Every conceivable spiritual benefit that we strive for, shall also accrue to the person who did not strive. Whatever we do willfully is therefore, also, a quite unnecessary perturbation of spirit. Cause and effect are nothing other than intellectual interpretations of an association. Every technique is followed in error, and it also an error to think that no technique is necessary. This is very hard to understand. We all follow techniques assiduously; and yet the very belief in the technique will create a disturbance of mind that is the very opposite of the goal. The solution to this intolerable dilemma is trust. All we can do is trust that,, whatever we do, whatever wills and desires appear in our lives, realisation will one day be associated with us.

Hi all To any sexually active person there is a rise and fall cycle of sexual appetite followed by loss of appetite. For a 16 year old male this cycle may be extremely short and may repeat 2 or 3 times a day. As we get older, the cycle slows, so that the appetite may only arise every few days, or less often than that. if we could simply accept this cycle and trust in it I think everyone would be fine. But we have a situation where we have half the people convinced that the periods of appetite are for some reason better, and the other half (the so-called spiritual ones) thinking that loss of appetite is better. The cycle continues in its own merry way, but in our thoughts and attitudes we try and buck against it. We have young men in their sexual primes trying to be like sexless old men; we have old men taking pills to try and be virile like young bucks, then visiting psychosexual therapists for what they call their 'impotence'. This is the insane state of affairs amongst those whose authentic spiritual cultivation is either neglected or misunderstood. But the simple fact remains: cultivation is associated with continence and eventually with total celibacy. This is the brute truth that confuses the spiritually novice, and leads them to try to emulate the adept. But emulation doesn't work. It has to come naturally - we must advance towards it within making it a goal, and every step on the way must be trusted as it is. Authentic spiritual cultivation basically accelerates the process of maturation. Physical ageing, as we all know, lengthens the cycle of appetite/loss of appetite. The spiritual adept may be free of desire like the old man is, but at a much younger age. But if your desire needs to be fought against by a vow, an act of will, or some other act of deliberate violence against the Tao, you are clearly not mature enough to be celibate, and would be better applying your energies to something else.

Actually, its often occurred to me that the need for celibacy might now actively attract those who can't accept their sexual inclinations. For example, it is much harder to be gay when you have been brought up as a Roman Catholic. Such a person might well feel that their sexuality is something that they need to hide from the world. What better way of making it up to God than to become one of his priests? And, wishful thinking as it is, I'm sure may such young men think that making this vow will solve the problem of their sexuality, stop people asking questions. Yes, I think nowadays there will be a lot of homosexuality in the priesthood. The seminaries one imagines to be like English boarding schools, and It is quite common for priests to live with each other in Church properties once they are working.

Yes, what springs to mind for me is the expectation for Catholic priests to be celibate, all based on the misguided idea that it will cause them to be more holy. Of course, it has never been the case that priests have actually been celibate - the attempt at repression doesn't work and never has done - but it has always been the case that their sexuality has been a cause of shame, and surrounded by secrecy. The priest whose sexual activity can't be in the open must do it with people who are similarly motivated to keep it a secret. Historically, this has been married women, or unmarried women from the upper classes. Both of these groups stood to lose everything if they were found out - social standing, marriage, their children, their property. They could therefore be trusted to keep things illicit, and likewise priests were ideal candidates for a clandestine sexual affair. As women became more empowered, the imperative for discretion became less and less: women were no longer safe targets for the priests sexual needs. As a population, the priests have therefore had to turn to those perennially disenfranchised groups: children and the learning disabled. When you read the history and literature from, say, the 17th Century when the Catholic Church was at its height - sexually active priests always created a delicious scandal when it came out, but it was recognised by all that it was something that went on behind closed doors. When priests stooped being able to have relations with fully functioning adults, their sexual behaviour was driven deeper underground. For many it became something unthinkable that their priest is a sexual being. People simply could not believe that something so incredible could occur. Paedophilia in the modern priesthood therefore has three causes: 1) the dogmatic insistence on the virtue of celibacy 2) the empowerment of women 3) the increasing belief that priests really are celibate. Until the Church changes its stance on celibacy, paedophlia will continue to haunt it. The sexual urge must find its outlet; pope after pope will fail to address the problem that causes string and universal disgust. Nobody condones it; talk to even the most devout Catholic and they are deeply pained by what goes on. And yet this attachment to celibacy is based on a simple intellectual error regarding the human will, that has not been made by any of the other world religions. It is already destroying the Church, and will destroy it completely unless celibacy is abandoned.

Wow - I like that!

Just as there are loads of people doing yoga to fix their bad back, there will be loads of people doing QiGong to improve their sex life. Maybe the pensioners that are already frisky seek you out as a teacher GrandmasterP? The point is, you can't ever know the authentic cultivator from the classes they attend. It seems to be that the really serious ones might actually stop classes for a while - and only come back to the classroon when they are the teacher. There was something else that spotless hinted at here: I'm sure there's loads of people can recognise this. You're feeling happy, serene, you're making progress - and you attract the opposite sex more than you ever have. You might go along with it, but in a deep sense you are just being passive. Nothing to do with a raging libido.

Also, it isn't just our need for sex that gradually diminishes, it is our need for anything external to bring us pleasure. Like I've said, the joy that comes from authentic spiritual cultivation is sovereign. It represents and contains all the things that we value in the everyday world: bodily pleasure, relaxation, love, power, beauty, goodness. There is a common denominator in all these things and that is what we discover. Although it looks like asceticism, the behaviour of the realised sage is not the same. Actually, there is no greater hedonist than the saint. The ascetic sees the pleasures of the world as something bad, a distraction from the real deal. The sage is happy to let those who enjoy the world to find their pleasure there. But for himself, he has no further need for that stuff. Anyone who calls worldly pleasures bad names is basically confessing that they don't understand the true spiritual nature of pleasure. And they must call it bad names precisely because they fear that fact that they are so drawn to worldly pleasure and attached to it. But for the sage there is no reason to denounce that which we he has transcended. It is our truest spiritual instincts that seek us to find pleasure anywhere.

It sounds to me like you've had an important realisation! To transcend life and death is the purpose and aim of the spiritual life. The secret to transcending life and death is in finding something that is the same despite all change. Something that remains untouched despite growth or decay. The intellect can't identify what this something is. The intellect can only process things that exist. And we can see with the same intellect that all that exists shall also change and eventually not exist. This 'something' has to be something that exists in the same form whether in a new born baby or a dead corpse. Eventually we realise that this 'something' is awarness itself! At first it seems like a con because we already know awareness and imagine that it is something that will cease with the death of our bodies. Realisation is when we realise that awareness creates birth and death, not the other way round. Awareness is not dependent on the life of our body; the life of our body is just another brief moment of awareness. Realisation is seeing that everything is passing before our eyes at lightning speed. Things come into existence for the merest hint of a moment, and then are gone forever. The same goes for our bodies. For 99.999999999999% of our existence, our bodies are nowhere to be seen. But we feel that they exist even when our awareness is on something entirely different. this is the illusion of birth and death that must be overcome.

Hi spotless, One of the problems that comes up when we talk about the spiritual life is what we use as the starting point. To those who have learned to do so early, everything that happens is interpreted as a 'step on the path'. But those who started life as materialists may date the spiritual life as starting only when something very grand, and unmistakably transcendental happens. Everyday people experience what you're talking about all the time. They might think themselves dried up and finsihed at the age of thirty; but a divorce comes, and then six weeks into a new relationship and they suddenly have the sexual energies of a 17 year old but with all the confidence and experience of a 30 year old. If such a person was into the Eastern traditions, they would almost certainly rationalise it with spiritual sounding terms: chakrasopening, kundalini rising etc. But this isn't the realisation that I'm talking about...its not the realisation that I'm explaining goes hand in hand with celibacy. They dissipate (my word was atrophy) because the person is already satisfied! A good meal can be totally satisfactory, everything we were hoping for, but there soon comes a time when we stop wanting to eat it. We are satisfied. We now have what we came for. It might come as a surprise to many, but spiritual realisation provides us with all pleasures that sex does. Not in a instant dramatic hit like the orgasm...but in the way of gentle peace and bodily relaxation that is the essence of the orgasm. If you have a person attached to a caffeine drip, it's nowhere near as powerful as a good espresso. But the truth is, the person on the drip will find themselves not really needing the espresso. The former craving never really takes hold. If offered they may take it, but they won't cross three streets and queue for 10 minutes. They just won't feel the motivation. Spiritual realisation is the subtle satisfaction of all the pleasures that the normal person spends their life chasing. This is why we should never denigrate wordly pleasures like sex. In essence, they are God itself. Its just the technique is bad: the hit is too brief, and too dependent on circumstances beyond our control. If sex still motivates you, then that is because you haven'y yet found the drip feed orgasm. It ain't gonna knock your socks off, which is perhaps why most people wouldn't touch true realisation with a bargepole.

Yes totally agree, and actually that's what I meant in the OP when I talked about trust. The trust to be sexually active if that's what is happening, the trust to be celibate if that's what is happening. When celibacy is turned into a technique, then sexual activity is automatically perceived as a failure, Truth is you could be making amazing progress with your libido still rampant. There is a lesson here for non-spiritual aspirants. Naturally occurring celibacy is called 'impotency' or 'frigidity'. People cannot accept what is happening to them, fight against it, pathologise the condition, and generally make themselves stressed and miserable. I remember reading in an 'Agony Aunt' a woman who was worried because her husband and her both didn't want to have sex anymore. Their libidos were in alignment, and yet she was still worried. Cab anything more insane be imagined?

Celibacy is just a fact of the realised life, in the same way as wisdom, goodness and joy are. Firstly. purposefully or unpurposefully, the urge for sex is gradually reduced. Sexual pleasure is of the same nature as spiritual joy; therefore as the inner spiritual joy that we carry wherever we go increases, there becomes less need and sense to pursue the same through sex. Sex might still be enjoyed to a certain extent, but the strong motivation for it gets gradually reduced. The same goes for all the other pleasures that come from external things. Something better has been found. Secondly, there is a reduction in the procreative urge. Once the person has become self-realised, there is no need for the search for realisation to be taken up by his offspring. The goal has been acheived, and with that success the need for offspring is eliminated. It is very possible that a person can be highly spiritually developed and still be sexually axctive, but with full realisation the urge for sex will completely vanish. For some people, celibacy comes very early, and they consider it one of their first 'fruits'.

Thank you but that word Constant is from Wu's translation - not my own idea! I'm just doing the commentary bits in between!

Hi dee, The reason we find it hard to understand how your friend could know the spoon thing is because we are convinced that we are individuals living in time and space. Knowledge, we believe, is acquired through experience, encoded into memory, and then retrieved at a later stage. But this is a very one-sided view of who we actually are. Seen from another perspective, every 'memory' is also a present moment vision, that appears in the ceaseless flow of things, stays for a brief instant, and then is gone forever. We are not individuals but a cosmic awareness that witnesses this flow of moments that exist only for the briefest imaginable instant. To those who are firmly rooted in this second perspective, all knowledge is just a present moment manifestation. It was not acquired in some so-called 'past'. in other words, knowledge based tuition is also, when seen from the other logical perspective, a present moment intuition. It is our very belief in the need for knowledge to come from empirical experience that holds us back. As we become more and more acquainted with our cosmic identity (and all spiritual practice is geared towards this aim) our belief in our need for tuition slowly relaxes. And therefore our experience of knowing things we cannot explain grows. We are all in touch with our cosmic selves, but to most of us it is a very vague and mostly unconscious awareness. This is why so many of us have uncanny stories like you do, but they have not become a regular fixture in our reality. And, as we can well imagine, they are most commonly associated with those states when our intellects are less fixated on our individuality in time and space - I mean semi-sleep for instance. When you start to understand intution and experience it regularly, it strikes you quite forcefully that ALL knowledge can be viewed as intuition. My friend and I are old friends, and yet we have also never met before. What we call a friend is therefore an instantiation of powerful and detailed intuition into the life of a stranger. It is often said that we are more likely to have telepathic experiences with those we know well. But, of course, those we know well ARE telepathic experiences. I hope this makes sense!! Best wishes, Nikolai

Manitou Yes totally agree! I think few of us realise how many situations really can result in a win-win for all concerned. We miss the win-win solution because we are blinded by the intellectual prejudices we bring, or we have unconscious vested interests that lead us to take sides. The sage, by being spiritually secure, does not need any particular outcome and so can see what is best for everyone. This comes up also in Chapter 16 http://taotechingcommentary.blogspot.fi/2014/04/chapter-16.html

Hi all ! I've now completed 27 chapters of my commentary - a third of the way through! http://taotechingcommentary.blogspot.fi/2014/04/chapter-1_18.html Thank you all for your comments so far. I would love to hear any feedback now there is more to read, either here or on the blog. Happy reading, and best wishes, Nikolai

Thank you!

nestentrie - I'm posting new chapters every day or two at the moment, but I'll post a few more reminders until its finished. Obviously I want people to read it. But's its a long job...! flowing hands - ...which you are making longer! I thought chapter 81 would be the end for me! I've been reading the new chapters and will try and post my thoughts on that thread. Thanks

When you're in a depression, all attempts to help can feel like intellectual bullshit...but still you find yourself on the receiving end of a gutful of it. The truth is, your depression scares people...it's just so hard to accept. You provoke everyone's deepest anxieties. They think your're going to kill yourself. If you meet one person who can cope with your suffering, who can accept it and endorse it then this doesn't make the situation worse. The deepest, most complex depressions are a consequence of the sufferer not being able to accept their own loss of self. To cope with depression is first and foremost to accept its reality. Talk to any person who has survived a deep depression and you are likely to hear a very strange thing. They do not regret what they went through. They find themselves to have been somehow enriched by the process. They appreciate the fuller vision of life they now hold... a vision that encompasses both the heights and the depths. They are more caring and compassionate in the face of human suffering. And they look back on their former self, and actually find themselves standing in moral judgement of who they once were. So often people look back and recognise that their depression was inevitable linked to their own former behaviours. Any therapist will know clients who think this way.

One thing they are almost certain not to hear is that depression might be a positive experience, and for that reason alone it is worth telling them. Different perspectives are never a bad thing. We must learn to trust the process of depression. Depression involves the spontaneous arising of behaviours that many spiritual aspirants attempt to mimic. The withdrawal from the world is a retreat into one's inner self. The will-lessness is the surrender to a higher power. The blankness and the apathy is meditation. The deep rumination is is the search for new truths, a search no different to that of the philosopher and jnana yogi. In our encounters with the depressed person we can be the one's who aren't constantly exhorting them into returning to things they no longer want to do. We can be the ones who aren't constantly treating them as though there is something wrong with them (and what psychotherapist can avoid this tacit accusation?) We can be the ones who recognise that it takes a special attitude to be even capable of depression, and that a great deal of mischief in the world is caused by those who seem incapable of even a moment's reflection or hesitation of will. Of course none of this makes sense to any but those who have already acquired a measure of higher wisdom. As I said in the OP, depression is the cessation of nearly all that the everyday world consider to be desirable human behaviour: industriousness, happiness, sociability. if the depressed person finds it hard to understand your viewpoint, it actually matters little for the time being. Your basic confidence in them, and the process they are going through will be of benefit to them regardless.

My own take is that the purification process of the dark night happens to everyone, but it either happens at a low intensity for a long period, or high intensity for a brief period. Only the latter tends to get called the Dark Night. I also agree with Jonas, who described as a kind of pendulum swinging, with the biggest swings coming first and slowly evening out.

I thought this was a good description of the dark night also: http://www.themystic.org/dark-night/index.htm

Let’s imagine we spent the day feeling quite well, but after our evening meal at 7pm we started to feel a bit strange. By 8 we are in bed, and already running a high fever. There are two ways to interpret our situation: an unwise way and a wise way. Unwise Before 7 o’clock we were well and healthy. But after our evening meal we became ill. We know we are ill because of our fever. To be ill is a negative situation and we must take measures to remove the fever. Paracetamol is effective at lowering our raging temperature. Wise All the above is one way to interpret our situation, but there is also an opposite and equally valid interpretation. Before 7 o’clock we were already ill, but unaware of the fact. The onset of the fever is therefore a positive development. The illness has been brought to our consciousness, and our body is now raising its temperature in order to kill off the microbes. The fever must be left to do its work. We can see that the wise person is not caught up in a definitive viewpoint. They have the flexibility to see that the fever (which has been brought to consciousness by physical symptoms) is simultaneously the onset of the illness and the onset of the healing. To the wise person illness is also health. Mental states of the unwise and the wise. The unwise person is immediately in a mentality of conflict. They have identified something that they wish to see eliminated. They wish to eliminate the symptoms of fever. They wish to eliminate the high body temperature that has developed to kill the microbes. They will not feel comfortable until their body temperature is normal. They will anxiously monitor their bodily sensations to check for signs of progress. Accompanying this checking will be a host of cognitions related to illness and recovery. The unwise person is ill and fully aware of their illness. The wise person, however, is not able to settle on a clear strategy. The moment they imagine themselves ill, rival cognitions remind them that they are already recovering. They are not in conflict because they have no certain desire to see their fever eliminated. They are therefore not constantly monitoring their body, and there are therefore few related cognitions about the illness. Although physiologically they are in an identical state to the unwise person, the illness is hardly interrupting their consciousness. They are ill, but hardly aware of the fact. Wisdom therefore benefits the patient in two ways. First, by having a balanced perspective the wise person is less likely to adopt interventions that disturb the body’s natural return to health. Second, the experiential impact of the illness is hugely reduced by not developing a fearful conflict mentality with all the accompanying feelings and cognitions. The key to good health is therefore to develop a fully rounded interpretation of bodily sensations. We must develop the ability to understand every malevolent symptom as simultaneously a benevolent symptom. I have a few ideas of how to do this, but I’d be interested to discuss this further. Best wishes, Nikolai

My guess is, Castaneda was a true and great visionary and mystic. Maybe he gained his powers through peyote, maybe he didn't: it doesn't matter which. Yes, he made it all up. Don Juan was not some real personage that existed in time and space and who others could have gone to chat with if they'd wish. Don Juan WAS Castaneda and this doesn't matter at all. Someone had those ideas and everyone who reads the books sincerely recognises the greatness within them. So why did he do it? Why the elaborate hoax?' Anyone who has any kind of original, extraordinary ideas is held back by the ordinariness of their own physical person. They are never going to be believed, and will probably be abused as a madman. This is the problem that all original people have. Jesus himself complained that 'the prophet is a nobody in his own country' (John 4:39). But the moment he crossed the border and become the 'exotic foreigner' he was listened to by the thousands. Castaneda did not cross the border in person, he put his own outstanding genius into the words of an fictional alter-ego: Don Juan. This is where Castaneda crapped out, to use his words. He told a lie, stuck with the lie and forced himself into isolation and eccentricity. With more courage he would have waited to become the sorcerer he wrote about. He would have quietly gone about his business and the people would have gravitated to him. It is only when we try to hard to preach that the uncomprehending masses reject us. So he would have let himself be the teaching and by being the real one himself he could have let Don Juan be fictional. He wouldn't have isolated himself and his teaching would have been heard. I think the modern reader has to separate the teachings from the catastrophe that Castaneda the man became.

http://thetaobums.com/topic/31986-the-third-eye-spiritual-eye/ In the above thread I discussed physical changes that occur within the eyeball as a response to spiritual practice. I talked about how the cognitive movement away from sharply defined concepts is reflected in the behaviour of the eye, which then ceases to narrow its focus on specific discrete objects of interest. This results in the dispersal of the fovea - which is a dense cluster of light-detecting cells on the retina behind the pupil. One of the noticeable characteristics in people who have achieved this is a brighter, more reflective eye. Less incoming light is absorbed by the fovea and the eye appears to sparkle from within. A further cognitive change is an increased spatial relativity. The spiritually developed person recognises that near and far are conventional concepts that have no objective reality. Such a person may stare at their own hands and experience them as massive and distant (as a complement to the usual view). The sun and stars may seem like mere baubles hanging over their garden. This viewpoint is also reflected in the physicality of the eyeball. It means that the ciliary muscles that surround the lens are less likely to be squeezing the lens in the attempt to focus in and that that is supposed to be 'near'. The shape of the whole eyeball is changed as a result and becomes more spherical. I would say that Secret Grotto is experiencing a change in the shape of his eyeball which pushes against the periorbital skin differently and makes it look more closely 'hugged'.

The shape of Yogananda's eyes completely changed during his life. when you look at young photos of him they're completely different.