IS IT LUST OR LOVE? (Part 3)

For example, let's say you desire union. When you're moving under the influence of lust, you aim to experience sexual satisfaction. What happens ten or twenty minutes after the so-called sexual satisfaction?

AUDIENCE: The itch comes back.

JAGAD GURU: Yes. The more you scratch, the more you itch. It keeps driving you for more. Yet the more you have, the more you itch. Sex is that sort of irritant. There's some kind of pleasure there but it doesn't quite satisfy the itch. It feels good while you scratch it, but then that's it and the pleasure is gone. The itch becomes greater the next time and it just drives you insane.

Lust is the downward movement and love is the upward movement. But it's the same thing moving either upward or downward. Therefore, if a person feels lust, for example, he should not get angry. He should know: "Hey, there's a power here that can be moved upward instead of downward. I can redirect it upward."

AUDIENCE: How is this possible?

JAGAD GURU: It's difficult to explain this to someone who doesn't understand a lot about yoga or a lot about the subtle physiology (subtle nervous system). It's also difficult to someone who doesn't understand about the existence of the Supreme Being and how a person can have a loving relationship with Him.

But briefly stated, we have a subtle physiological system. This subtle nervous system has a primary nerve or channel that runs from the base of your spine to the top of your head. Along this pathway, there are various chakras.

You are the spirit soul or living force inhabiting this material body. When your life air is pushing downward and is exerting pressure on the lower chakras, then you're going to be continually immersed in sexual thoughts and desires. And the more you try to satisfy the itch, the more it becomes agitated and the more you get stuck on that level.

There are some methods by which you can try to control the life air and direct it upwards. This involves the process of kundalini yoga (or astanga yoga). I don't teach this process specifically. But there are more simple methods used in this connection. For example, one can resort to taking a cold shower. It's a simple way to cool the body down whenever the heat of the body increases due to the lust that is increasing.

But the primary means that really reshapes and redirects that sexual energy is the proper cultivation of your love for the Supreme Being. This is the science that I teach and it is known as bhakti yoga.