Our whole Western culture is becoming very degraded on account of this overindulgence in illicit sex life.

Struggling with Sex Attraction

Hard knot in the heart

The attraction between male and female is the basic principle of material existence. On the basis of this misconception, which ties together the hearts of the male and female, one becomes attracted to his body, home, property, children, relatives and wealth. In this way, one increases life's illusions and thinks in terms of "I" and "mine". — Srimad-Bhagavatam 5.5.8

PURPORT by A.C. BHAKTIVEDANTA SWAMI PRABHUPADA: Sex serves as the natural attraction between man and woman, and when they are married, their relationship becomes more involved. Due to the entangling relationship between man and woman, there is a sense of illusion, whereby one thinks this man is my husband or this woman is my wife. This is called hridaya-granthi, or the hard knot in the heart. This knot is very difficult to undo. Even though a man and woman separate, either for the principles of varnashram or simply to get a divorce, in any case the man always thinks of the woman, and the woman always thinks of the man. Thus a person becomes materially attached to family, property and children. Although all of these are temporary, the possessor unfortunately identifies with his property and wealth. Sometimes even after renunciation, one becomes attached to a temple or to a few things that constitute the property of a sannyasi, but such attachment is not as strong as family attachment. The attachment to the family is the strongest illusion. In the Satya-samhita it is said, "Sometimes it is found amongst exalted personalities like Lord Brahma that the wife and children are not a cause of bondage. On the contrary, wife actually helps further spiritual life and liberation. Nonetheless, most people are bound by the knots of the material relationship and consequently they forget their relationship with Krishna."

The essence of material activities is the male and female attraction. Even in the lower species of life there is the attraction of male and female. So in the human for of life this attraction is the strongest. The animals have a season for mating, but the human beings are always in a mating season. In other words, this male and female attraction is the basic platform of material activities. Verily a man will not work hard unless there is some woman in the background. It is said that behind every great man there is a woman. The woman inspires the man to work hard for sense gratification. What is the inspiration the woman gives to the man to do so much hard work? Two hours driving to work, eight hours work, two hours driving back, eating a cold sandwich and gulping down coffee, coming home to see some television and have a little sex and sleep. This is the work of the man, and he is doing all this work just for a little sex enjoyment, maybe five or ten minutes' worth. For this sensation of sex enjoyment every man in the material world is working very hard. And then there are children, so he has to work even harder. And then there are relatives. There must be a house and car. There must be friends, insurance, payment of taxes. So many things. On the basis of this sex attraction, every man and woman is bound up in the struggle for material existence. He is working very hard to satisfy his wife, his children, relatives, friends and countrymen, but actually his work is all futile, because material existence is temporary. Even if one becomes a great political leader or a great scientist or big businessman, nevertheless everything a man achieves by the sweat of his brow is lost with the loss of the body. Bhagavad-gita says, "For one who is born, it is certain he will die."

So, this sex attraction intoxicates the conditioned soul. It pollutes his natural intelligence. Every materialistic man thinks that he will enjoy family life with wife and children, friends and relatives forever. He thinks everything is permanent, but in fact everything is temporary. This is the basic defect of the material way of life.

There is no harm in living with wife and children and doing business or some other occupation, but unless there is systematic training in the science of self realization, Krishna consciousness, then everything one works for actually becomes the source of misery, the source of suffering and bondage. We are working very hard to become happy, but the real result of our work is that we become more and more unhappy and frustrated, and more and more bound up in material existence.

Srimad-Bhagavatam says, "One should live only because human life gives one the opportunity to understand God, to become self realized." The real aim of life is not to work hard for temporary material pleasures. The real aim is to become liberated from this struggle for existence and go back home, back to Godhead. So Vedic civilization was aimed at making spiritual advancement by practicing Krishna consciousness.

In Vedic society there was only one order of life that allowed association with the opposite sex: the grihasta ashram, or in marriage. In the other three orders of life, association with the opposite sex was strictly avoided. The brahmacharis, or students, were trained especially in the matter of controlling their senses, expecially sex attraction. And after the brahmachari was fully trained, at the age of 20 or 25 he was allowed to marry. But such a brahmachari who was trained in renunciation and celibacy would not become entangled, would not become unnecessarily attached to wife and children, home, relatives and friends. And he would be able to give up family life when the children were grown up, say 20 or 25 years old. Then the man of the family would hand over all the responsibilities such as household affairs and business to his children, and would practice becoming detached by going out from his home periodically to some holy place to practice penance and austerity. And after practicing like this for five or ten years, then he would leave home altogether. That is the fourth order of life called sannyasa, the renounced order. In that stage of life a man would give up all connections with his wife, children, friends, business, everything, and dedicate the remaining years of his life to becoming fully self realized or Krishna conscious.

That was the Vedic way. Today there is no system of regulating the human society. Everyone becomes entangled in family life, and no one will give it up. Even at the age of 70 and 80 years, a man is still at home with his wife, children, friends and relatives, and he only gives it up when death forces him out of the picture. That is a very degrading way to die. One should die alone, away from wife, children and friends and in full Krishna consciousness. Vedic civilization was organized in such a way that everyone was actually on the spiritual path. That has been lost, and thre is no systematic training by the government leaders or teachers or parents. Everyone is in ignorance without any idea about the goal of human life. It is taken for granted that the purpose of human life is simply to enjoy by eating, sleeping, defending and having sex as much as possible. In this way the human society has degraded practically to the platform of animal life. Just for their sex enjoyment they have created abortion, contraception and so many cruel practices which are very sinful.

All these practices are due to ignorance of nature's laws, ignorance of God's laws. Just as a state is governed by the laws of the king or president or prime minister, similarly the universe, or the state of the creation, is governed by the laws of God, and a human being's first responsibility is to learn the laws of nature, the laws of God. That is the real meaning of religion. Religion means the orders given by God. Dharmam tu sakshad bhagavat-pranitam. Religion cannot be created by ordinary men. Religion means the orders that have been given by God.

What are those orders? They're working on us or acting on us all the time. Just like if I touch fire I will be burned, because that is a law of nature. The basic law of nature is every action has a resultant reaction. Therefore, whatever you do, you are held accountable for it. Nature keeps account. You may not see how an account is being kept of your activities, thoughts and words, but everything is being recorded, just as what I'm speaking now is being recorded with the aid of a microphone and recording machine. If in our own small way there is such an arrangement for recording, in nature there is also an arrangement for recording everything. And whne this term of activities we call our life comes to an end at death — or when the spirit soul gives up this body, then the records are tallied, and according to the tally you will have to accept the next body to receive the reactions to your work in this life. That is called karma. And it is this law of karma which binds us to material existence in the shape of repeated birth and death.

We are repeating birth and death. This life is only a spot or one step in our great journey back home, back to Godhead. Just as in a spool of movie film there are thousands of pictures, so in the eternity of our existence, this lifetime is just like one picture. But in ignorance we think this spot of fifty or sixty years is everything. Actually, life is eternal. There is no beginning and no end. This material existence is not our original life. And being eternal by nature, we do not want change. We want permanence, we want permanent happiness. But we are trapped in a temporary material body. And therefore material life is always full of fear. Everyone is in anxiety. Everyone is uptight. Why? Because everyone identifies himself falsely with the temporary material body. Therefore the first duty of the human being is to get out of this false identity, to get out of the false concept "I am this body, and this is my wife, these are my children, this is my house, my car" and come to the awakening that "I am spirit", aham brahmasmi. When we come to this spiritual concept of life, automatically we become happy, just as a person automatically becomes relieved upon awakening from a bad dream. Sometimes at night we have a bad dream, a nightmare. So the solution is to wake up. As soon as you wake up, everything is solved. So as soon as we become Krishna cvonscious, then all problems immediately disappear.

So this attraction between male and female is the beginning of material entanglement. A man becomes attached to a woman, then he becomes lusty for her association, they have contact, and then there is pregnancy. In this way material activities expand until the man is so much entrapped that he cannot imagine anything beyond his wife, his house, his children. So Vedic civilization aims at disentangling the conditioned soul from this illusory way of life and engaging him in the service of the Lord. Therefore brahmachari training was so important. The students were celibate and trained to become physically, mentally, intellectually and spiritually strong.

Nowadays men are weak because they are always indulging in illicit sex. That means they are spoiling their brains. Their brains are affected by excessive discharge of semen. Vedic literature explains that a man gets a powerful brain if he controls his genitals, his sex life. One who never discharges semen, either voluntariliy or involuntarily, becomes very, very powerful. Our whole Western culture is becoming very degraded on account of this overindulgence in illicit sex life. QUESTION: Why did God give us this sex desire which is in all species of life?

HANSADUTTA: Because the principle of sex attraction is in the Absolute Truth, therefore we find the same principle reflected in a perverted way in the material world. But the material world is not our original existence. It is an artificial existence, and the conditioned soul comes to the material world because he rebels against the authority of the Supreme Lord and wants to be supreme himself. There is always a great competition for supremacy in the material world, individually, communally, nationally and internationally. Everyone is competing for supremacy. That is the history of the material world.

So as long as we remain ignorant of the spiritual world and the Lord of that world, Krishna, and our relationship with Him, we will continue to be attracted by the imitation world, especially in the shape of sex attraction. Sex attraction is also there in the Absolute Truth, in the Lord, but there is no inebriety, no entanglement like we find here. The material world is a kind of imitation world. Everything existing in this world exists also in the spiritual world, in Vaikuntha. And the Lord is called purusha, which means "male", and the living entity is called prakriti, which means "female". So the sex principle exists in the spiritual world, but there is no inebriety; it is pure.

Sigmund Freud wrote about the sex principle being the motivating factor behind all human activities, and he advocatd that therefore everyone should satisfy his sex desire as much as possible. But this is exactly the opposite of the Vedic conclusion, which is that one should actually avoid it as much as possible. This sex attraction is the cause of material entanglement and the cause of all kinds of sufferings. What Freud did not know is why the sex principle exists at all. Why should there be such a thing as sex attraction? He didn't know this. But the spiritualists know that this principle must be there in its original form in the Absolute Truth. The Absolute Truth means that point from which everything has come out. Janmady asya yato. The Absolute Truth is not void or impersonal. The Absolute Truth is the Supreme Being, the Supreme Person, just as you are a person and I am a person. The Supreme Truth is a person with the same qualities that you and I possess — the power of thinking, the power of feeling, the power of willing. In other words, I am a sample of the Absolute. Just like if we examine a drop of water from the ocean, whatever we find in the drop of water we can conclude that the same thing is there in unlimited quantities in the ocean. So whatever I find in myself I can conclude the same thing exists in the Supreme, but there are no limits to His thinking power, to His creative power, and so on. So the tendency to be attracted by the opposite sex is also there in the Absolute Truth. The material world is a relative world, but there is an absolute world. We can't imagine it, but we can realize it by the process of bhakti-yoga, and that is the purpose of practicing yoga: to come to the platform of absolute life, absolute happiness, absolute knowledge. That is the real aim.

Sometimes people say, "But sex is natural." It is natural, but this is a lower nature. There is a higher nature, and there is a lower nature. The material world is the lower nature, and the spiritual world is the superior nature. The body is a creation of inferior nature, but within the body is the soul, which is the superior nature. So the superior nature and the inferior nature combined create an incompatible situation. We are always struggling with this body. We have to find a place to sleep, we have to find food, we have to protect ourselves. There are so many problems, from the first breath to the last. And everything which we accomplish in life is ultimately lost. So an intelligent man will ask, "Then what is the purpose of this life? Why should I struggle so hard just to lose everything?" That is the meaning of yoga. Yogi means very intelligent. He thinks, "Why should I work day and night for wife, children, house and car if all these things will be lost when I lose my body?" He asks, "What is the purpose of life? Where have I come from? Where will I go when this body is destroyed?" He's not interested in doing anything until he gets the answers to these questions, until he realizes actually what he is. That is human life. That is actually civilized life. Anything less than this is animal life.

QUESTION: How can householders living outside the temple follow the principles of celibacy that you described?

HANSADUTA: Householders are also called brahmacharis if they follow the rules and regulations of the householder ashram. According to Srimad-Bhagavatam, even a householder, i.e. a married man, living with wife and children, is allowed to contact his wife for sex once in a month only, at the time especially favorable for procreation. In other words, a man is first of all allowed to take a wife only because a wife is necessary in order to beget a child, and therefore th rules and regulations permit sex once in a month for the purpose of begetting a child. If one is not interested in begetting children, then he is not allowed to indulge in sex. That is the 100% contraception method. The family planning method is to train people to control their senses, not to kill children in the womb in the name of population control. That is vicious and sinful, barbaric. Even animals don't do that. And contraception is also not allowed. The real contraceptive method is don't have sex, and you won't have children.

The sex pleasure which we experience in sexual intercourse is a compensation for the work one has to do after he begets a child. You get five minutes of enjoyment for 50 years of work. Therefore in all the scriptures of the world it is discouraged, especially in Vedic literature. Vedic culture teaches the boys to be brahmacharis and not to marry. They are trained like that in school: "Don't marry". And all the evils and pitfalls of married life are vividly described. So if a brahmachari is strong, he'll not marry. He'll remain a celibate student. But if isn't strong and has some attraction to family life, then he's allowed to marry, but the conditions are like I described. Once a month. And so if we calculate ... once a month, and suppose the wife becomes pregnant, then after that sex is not allowed until six months or a year after the child is born ... practically speaking, a man may have sex 20 times in a lifetime. Five minutes each time. So five times 20 amounts to an hour and a half, or something like that. So it's not worthwhile to accept this great burden of wife and children, house and car. It's better to tolerate this urge, which Srimad-Bhagavatam describes just like the itch on the hand or back. If there's an itch, we want to scratch it. So the sex urge is a kind of itch in the body. And sex indulbence is trying to relieve that itch, but the result is catastrophic. Better to tolerate this urge, this itching. But as I said, if it's not possible, all right, take one wife, but live according to the grihasta ashram. Even in the grihasta ashram, when the children are grown up, then the man should leave home and again become renounced. He should not live at home until the last days like an old dog under the table. This is also described in the Srimad-Bhagavatam. When the parents become old, disabled and feeble, then the children very grudgingly take care of them somewhere in a room, and they very grudgingly feed them. It's a very unfortunate situation, and no one should allow himself to become trapped like that. He should leave home and practice renunciation in the last years of his life. That is recommended.