I’d just like to consider the nature of mind by taking into account the inherent relationship between body and mind in being human. For no matter how significant the body may be and no matter how important silent practice in your own body might be, the mind does and must participate one way or another. Within the inherent integrity of being human, there is a physical aspect and there are the non physical aspects. Whether or not you include all of these aspects within ‘mind’ is not important. It’s just the use of terminology. So I think I’m probably going to be inconsistent with my use of the word ‘mind’. But it doesn’t really matter too much. The theoretical understanding is not the important thing. The importance of theoretical understanding is the effect that it has on one’s experience. Because to a great extent our experience is conditioned by our thinking, by our prior conceptualisation, by our beliefs.

The sophistication of the human cortex produces a sophistication in the non-physical aspects of being human. Obviously the presence of the cortex confers many advantages. But that doesn’t mean that the presence of the cortex is only advantageous. The power of the cortex to distinguish and to organise perceptual information is so impressive and so useful and even so absolutely necessary that it can and does outstrip its brief. This may be why 'mind' and 'thinking' have become dirty words in the subworld of spiritual practice. ‘No mind’ is held up as an ideal of perfection, a sign of enlightenment or freedom. 'No thinking' being the equivalent of 'no mind'. But 'no thinking' implies no functioning of the cortex. So I’d like to relate thinking to action, particularly the activity of yoga posture practice.

In the beginning, which does not have to last very long if it’s undertaken effectively, thought is required. There is a mental aspect to establishing the body in a particular shape. In a yoga posture class, this mental aspect can be taken care of mainly by the teacher. But in one’s own practice, at least in the beginning, you have to make a decision as to where you’re going. You have to have some concept of where you’re going, what you’re going to do, what shape you’re going to make. In the beginning, when you’re not familiar with the shape or the shapes are difficult, the mind may need to participate quite a lot in saying: ‘I think maybe my feet are too wide / too close.’ Or whatever.

But after a while, when you become familiar with the shape or shapes, the familiarity being embedded somatically or embodied, then thinking is not so much required. That doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. It only means to the extent that embodiment has taken place, is it not required. You can’t arbitrarily say that after a certain amount of time or certain movements you shouldn’t need to think about the postures. But you can extract the principle, so long as you’re being careful not to make the principle an absolute, to not fix it. When actions are unfamiliar or challenging, and in yoga posture practice the two often go hand in hand - and they can become familiar and still be challenging - it’s quite likely that thought will help. Thinking will help. Clarification of the distinctions between certain actions, certain parts of the body will help. Eventually, this clarification, this distinctiveness doesn’t require thought. But in the beginning it probably does.

So this means that in the beginning of yoga posture practice and in the beginning of learning to cook, drive a car or construct a rocket, the mind needs to be used in a particular way. Discriminating between this and that, identifying objects and actions by their distinguishing characteristics. It’s obvious that you need to be able to distinguish between left and right when you come into asymmetrical postures. Even in symmetrical postures, you need to be able to distinguish between hand and foot, between arm and leg. If you’re not used to the posture you need to be told where the arm goes, where the foot, hand and leg goes. This involves the mind, recognising separable bodyparts, their location, characteristics and possibilities and applying intent. And then recognising and interpreting impact. When you’re going through the process of sensitising and awakening the body, the mind needs to participate in this to recognise, to be able to learn and distinguish between pain and pleasure. To be able to distinguish the subtleties of pain, discomfort, release, ease, pleasure, delight so that you can navigate.

To distinguish is the fundamental function of the human mind. It’s necessary for the human being to be able to distinguish at a distance, a four legged animal with a tail that was a dog from a four legged animal with a tail that was a wolf or a tiger. This is a function of the mind. A rabbit doesn’t need to make those distinctions. Any four legged animal with a tail coming over the horizon means: get the fuck out of here! This clarification, this distinction, which aspect of mental functioning Aristotle had such fun with, is the basis of logic and reason. It’s the basis of thinking, being able to distinguish between left and right, this and that, front and back, top and bottom, inside and outside, dog and cat, donkey and tiger etc. To be able to distinguish between the wind shaking the tree and an earthquake shaking the tree. So this realm of distinction is one in which through distinctions we separate out this from that. We separate the dangerous from the safe, pain from pleasure. This involves thinking, and it is necessary to the beginning of any learning process.

Within our yoga posture practice we also need to make connections between these distinguishable aspects of our body, our shape making, our actions, so that we can be clear about their impacts. So we can be sure that the actions we are taking are delivering the results we want, whatever they may be: even if they are not integrity. But this process itself is not not to make distinctions. It involves making distinctions. But it means connecting that which has been distinguished to that which has been distinguished from it, beginning to see the relationship between apparently separate parts of the body and apparently separate actions.

Eventually it needs to become clear, and it does if yoga posture practice becomes effective, that all actions are connected to other actions. And all actions are connected to other impacts, and all impacts are connected to all other actions throughout the mandala of the body. So there is a somatic and an intellectual recognition of selectiveness, connectedness and interconnectedness that is invited on the basis of actions being taken with integrity within awareness of their impacts. This all involves the mind. But as you go from separateness to connectedness, to interconnectedness, less distinctions need to be made and more awareness needs to be functioning so that you can feel the interconnections and the connections. When you’re making distinctions between this and that it’s ok for the mind to be on this and not on that, and then on that and not on this. And then it makes it easier to distinguish. But in order to make connections, the mind needs to be in both places at once. In order to make interconnections, attention needs to be in many places at once. Or awareness needs to simultaneously and instantaneously include many objects and many actions, many impacts that can be distinguished between in order to clarify them.

All of this involves mental activity or the mind, the non physical aspect of being human. But within it you could make the distinction between mind and awareness. Sometimes awareness is included in mind, as in Zen, but for the moment, I’m going to start to make a distinction. Mind, being the functioning of the cortex, analysis, recognition, evaluation, categorisation, sorting, organising, filing. We’re so used to this process that to a great extent it goes on unconsciously. But it’s going on. It’s going on below the threshold of our perception and shaping our subconscious. If we think that actions or impacts have been caused by object A or B or C, this can have a devastatingly different impact on the shape of our subconscious mind. If we think that an unpleasant experience has been caused by someone we don’t like, this has a very different impact on us than if we interpret that experience as having been caused by somebody we love. The key to that difference is to a great extent intent. What we think they meant by it. Attribution of intent is done by the mind. The mind is doing it, not necessarily consciously, on the basis of its subconscious assumptions and beliefs.

Even though men are subject to this tyranny more than women, our Euro/American culture, is not very hospitable to feeling. It’s much more hospitable to intellect, to thinking, to analysis and to evaluation. Boys are taught very young not to cry for any reason at all. Girls are not so subject to this but nevertheless there’s still a cultural consensus that thinking is more valuable and more important than feeling and that you can trust your thinking but you can’t necessarily trust your feeling. That you should be rational about things. This has been very deeply embedded. That you can only tell what’s going on if you’re thinking clearly, straight. This is very deep. But in yoga posture practice it soon becomes clear that no matter whether or not that may be true in certain circumstances, it’s definitely not true in yoga posture practice. Just as, for example, it’s definitely not true when you’re in a love relationship. Perhaps the most damaging thing to a love relationship is the clarity and the consistency of the logical mind. It’s needed in the beginning as you have to check that the guy’s not a serial killer. You make those checks, in your own way. Is this guy going to be ok / safe / rich enough? Or whatever. This is going on in the mind. But if you stay there, it’s not going to be a love relationship. It’s going to be a neurotic power struggle.

It’s the same with yoga posture practice. Constantly evaluating and analysing, yoga can never happen because what you’re doing is establishing and maintaining your body and your actions as if they were separate from you. Which they can sometimes be taken to be, and usefully taken to be. In other words, if you get angry a lot, it can be useful to say to yourself: well that’s not me. Which is in a way a kind of a separation. But in yoga posture practice this doesn’t help because yoga means union. Body and mind have to find their inherent unity. What this means is that the mind, thinking mind, analysing mind, evaluating mind has to become quiet. But not if mind means awareness. Not if mind means sensitivity. Not if mind means responsiveness to situations. Which it can be taken to be.

Of course a certain amount of evaluation and analysis is required in yoga posture practice in the beginning. But when postures become familiar and when the inherent integrity of the body has been awakened then you can leave the evaluation and the analysis to the body in terms of stability and comfort or sthiramuskham. Which then just becomes: how you feel. Whereas in the beginning sthiramuskham means intellectually checking: ‘Do I really have half my weight on my left foot and half on my right foot? Is my back heal grounded? Is the back of my back knee open?’ Because the feeling faculty has not yet fully awakened. Or the intelligence of the body has not yet been fully awakened. Eventually it will. And then thinking is not required.

But when you come to silent stillness, sometimes known as meditation, then the situation is somewhat different. Of course silent stillness doesn’t just happen when you’re sitting upright. You could be in a forward bend a long time; you could be in headstand or shoulder stand or something like that. Silent stillness implies that you’ve been able to relax enough because you’re stable enough to make no unnecessary effort. So that there is no need to evaluate anything going on in the body. When there is no need to evaluate anything in the body because there is no need to do anything new in the body, then you start to come face to face with your mind. This is a very important and necessary part of yoga practice. Not just sitting to meditate but when you come into childpose or anywhere where you’re staying for a while and don’t need to constantly check and adjust. Then you start to come face to face with two different kinds of mind activit:y analysis, evaluation or thinking and just awareness or feeling.

Distinction can be made between thinking about what is actually happening in the body and thinking about what is not actually happening in the body. It may be that thinking about what is actually happening in the body is actually necessary in order for the body to become more stable and more relaxed and more still. It may even be that thinking about things that are not actually happening in the body is necessary for your mind to become more stable and relaxed and free. So even though you can make this distinction it is not necessarily so that thinking about what is in the body is more relevant than thinking about what is not. Unless we’re living in a cage isolated from all human obligation, relationship and activity, there are bound to be things that we have left undone. There are bound to be things that are still troubling us. Things that we have not done are things that are still troubling us. The mind will show them to us when we come to stillness. It may even be that a little bit of thought, of thinking is necessary for the mind to relax about it and quieten again. Whereas if you’re thinking: ‘I mustn’t think about this as I’m supposed to be doing yoga or meditating,’ and you push that thought away it will keep trying to come back and disturb you.

So when I say that thinking is not inherently necessary to childpose, that means thinking is not inherently necessary to the shape of childpose. But it might be necessary for you being in childpose right now. You being in childpose may be an invitation to you to relax enough to encounter whatever it is that’s hanging out in your subconscious and disturbing you. So your silent stillness is giving you an opportunity to recognise that there’s nothing you can do about it in the moment. That no thinking about it in the moment can help. If that’s seen clearly, you’ll just stop thinking about it. Or perhaps you might recognise that actually a little bit of thinking might bring you to that place where you then recognise: ‘Ok I’ve worked out what needs to be done. But I can’t do anything about it now.’ And then you can relax.

So when I’m speaking about enquiring into the possibility of letting go of that, it doesn’t mean you should be letting go of that. It doesn’t mean that you should be coming to a silence of the mind. It means that you enquire into the possibility of the mind becoming as relaxed as the body. Which may require the mind to adjust itself a little bit in the same way that the body has to adjust itself a little bit in order to more deeply relax. The adjustment in the mind involving some thinking perhaps.

In our daily life the power of the cortex and its ability to analyse, to project, to imagine, to speculate, can be and is very useful. But it can be and is very harmful. The closer thinking sticks to actions that can be taken or are being taken, the more useful and helpful it is. But the further thinking diverges from the possibility of real action being taken, the more harmful it is. So you could make a distinction here between functional thinking and dysfunctional thinking. Functional thinking meaning thinking that supports the life process and dysfunctional thinking being thinking that does not, thinking that actually hinders the life process by creating confusion, by creating a mess. This is based on the thinking capacity of the cortex, the ability of the cortex to make up stories, to tell stories. And we all know that stories are great, stories are useful and that you can learn from stories. But also great harm can be done by stories when they’re not truthful. I say not truthful deliberately rather than not true.

So let’s take for example when Michelle closed the windows this morning. It’s quite possible that Pelle or somebody who appreciated Pelle opening the window started to tell themselves a story about Michelle or about opening the window, or whatever. Pelle in the first place may have told himself a story: “it’s too hot and therefore I must open the window.” This particular story arises from a set of beliefs as much as from direct experience. A silent story laid down in his mind: the relationship between yoga practice, heat and fresh air. Our minds are full of such stories. Many of them are untrue, or untruthful. One of them, a very common one in yoga posture practice is that heat is advantageous to yoga posture practice. This is untrue. It is just a story. What heat is advantageous to is flexibility and that’s about it. It is disadvantageous to strength, stability and stamina. It is only advantageous to flexibility provided we pretend that flexibility doesn’t affect the connective tissue. When it does start to affect the connective tissue because you’re so hot that your mind can’t function properly, you’re getting foggy, your sensitivity can’t function properly. You become insensitive and you start to damage the connective tissues because the heat does allow you to become more flexible and to make more movement.

It’s also not true that by practicing in heat your body becomes more free. If you were to practice in Sweden for months and months and never be able to get your leg behind your head, you could go to India and on the first day you might be able to do it. Whereas if you were to put your leg behind your head day after day in India and you go to Sweden, you probably wouldn’t be able to do it. You’d probably think: ‘What’s wrong?’ You’d probably think that it was too cold and that cold is bad. But in both instances your body would be expressing its inherent integrity. More heat invites the body to open. More cold invites the body to close. Neither state indicates your flexibility as fixed. My experience is actually if you practice in the cold, when you get to the warm your body is much more flexible. It just relaxes and softens and opens and finds it so easy to work in the warm.

But if the heat being generated in your body is met by a cold draft of air, this can be very traumatic to the muscles and they can go into spasm. Whatever stories we may have about such things, they can all become truthful by our becoming sensitive to the impact of our actions. They can all be adjusted, unconsciously and somatically without us having to make an intellectual debate about whether heat or cold is better or worse, whether windows open is better or worse. All of these things can be found out on the basis of experience in the light of our awareness. But in our lives, the story telling faculty of the human cortex tends to run away with itself so often and so easily that despite the fact that it entertains us highly, it also makes us deeply suffer. We don’t realise where the suffering is coming from. Because part of the story telling is to tell us that the suffering is coming from somewhere or from someone “else”. That its not coming from the mind’s story telling

We can’t say that the mind, the brain, the cortex are addicted to story telling. That’s their function. But we are addicted to that function. To a great extent we’ve been taught to be. We’ve been taught to apply the mind to everything rigorously. But if we allow our practice to reveal to us the functioning of our mind, without having to go to war with the mind or with thinking, we can just start to distinguish clearly between thinking that is helpful or functional and thinking that is unhelpful or dysfunctional. Or, thinking that is organic or that is synthetic, an imposition. Organic thinking being thinking that is arising naturally from the activity at hand and the implications of the activity at hand.

When mental activity, evaluation, analysis, categorisation, recognition, labelling, naming, is not required and is not taking place but awareness is still there, you’re not asleep or unconscious. This absence of those aspects of mind is what is implied by the phrase ‘presence of mind‘ or brahmacharya. Or being present to that which is actually happening. This means not labelling, not categorising, not analysing, not evaluating: which is just a bunch of ‘nots’ So what does it actually mean? It means seeing what there is to be seen, hearing what there is to be heard, tasting what is to be tasted, smelling what is to be smelled, feeling what there is to be felt without any statement being made about it.

So when your alarm clock wakes you up in the morning, it is heard but until you’ve actually awoken, no statement is made about it. When it’s first heard it just begins to wake you up. But at a certain point the mind begins to tell you its stories. ‘Oh fuck, I’ve got to get up now, it’s six o’clock.’ But the hearing can take place without the naming and labelling. So can have seeing, tasting, smelling, feeling without thinking. So this is what is meant by brahmacharya. You could say brahmacharya is the functioning of awareness without the interference of the thinking mind. But that doesn’t mean to say that the function of the thinking mind is always an interference. So what that means is that actually brahmacharya can be present with thinking when thinking is not an interference; when thinking is not dysfunctional; when thinking is not synthetic; when thinking is organic and functional.

What I mean by organic and functional is for example, let’s say in virabhadrasana, all of a sudden you may run out of energy to keep the back leg straight, and it begins to bend. And the lower back starts to say “no!” And all of a sudden you think: ‘I must straighten my leg.’ That is organic thinking, functional thinking. That is not breaking brahmacharya. That’s actually a part of your presence of mind. But if you go: ‘I must straighten my leg but oh I don’t feel like it,’ that’s going towards dysfunctional thinking. But not necessarily. It’s not dysfunctional if you then go ‘ok I don’t feel like it so I’d better come out of the posture.’ So then actually it’s functional thinking and it’s part of your brahmacharya expressing itself.

So I’m making certain distinctions with reagrd to mental activity and situations within which they happen which may be subtle and may even be a little bit confusing perhaps. But like everything in yoga posture practice, through familiarity, the subtle becomes the obvious and confusion becomes clarity. Without any special effort being required to become clear. The compass that makes those distinctions is the same compass the body needs to establish integrity: stiramsukam. Unnecessary mental activity however, is not as obvious as unnecessary physical activity. Unnecessary physical activity, tension or hardness, is not that hard to detect. But unnecessary mental activity is more subtle. What is hard to realise, because mental activity of one kind or another is happening almost all the time, is that the process of mental activity itself takes effort, expends energy. But it’s so small an amount and it’s so consistently being expended that we don’t notice.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of getting up in the morning and starting to work with your body in the fields or in the kitchen, all day long. And then before nightfall coming back to bed and welcoming sleep with open arms. You may have come close to it once or twice. If you’re lucky, you’ll have come close to it many times. You may also have experienced a situation where you get up in the morning and have had absolutely nothing to do so you’ve gone down to the beach and you’ve got in the hammock and you’ve spent the day buying pina coladas, smoking cigarettes, maybe occasionally having a swim. And then sooner or later, night time comes around and you welcome sleep with open arms and yet you’ve hardly done anything physically. But your mind has been going all the time. Mental effort, activity actually consumes much more energy than physical activity. But because of the inherent unity of body and mind, to the extent that the body starts to relax, that is an invitation to the mind to relax. Because organic activity, functional activity becomes less. But, out of habit, only too often, dysfunctional thinking pops into that space and we start to tell ourselves stories.

Behind all of this is that we’ve been conditioned to devalue feelings and to run away from unpleasant feelings. The basis of this conditioning is a cellular imperative. One that has become distorted: the painpleasure mechanism. When you were a child and unhappy about something, how often were you given a sweetie or an ice cream so that you would stop bothering your parents? In order for you to stop bothering your parents, you were given a drug, sugar, to feel better. This kind of conditioning experience goes very deep. And so when we go into a yoga posture and we go into silent stillness and that silent stillness reveals physical, psychological or emotional pain, we turn away from it. We’re habituated to turn away from it and to tell ourselves a story. Amongst the most dangerous of these stories are the stories that explain the pain. If that explanation becomes a substitute for feeling it. Because it’s only through feeling it that it truly releases. That doesn’t mean that no explanation is required, that doesn’t mean that an explanation is wrong or bad. It just means that the evaluative, analytical tendency of the mind has been conditioned to be a way of not feeling things.

When you’re doing yoga posture practice, it’s obvious that you can’t protect your joints if you can’t feel them. But also you could say that you can’t protect your heart if you can’t feel it. You can’t protect your mind if you can’t feel it. What this means is that mind has its place in yoga posture practice and it’s very easy to be confused about its place. Even though organic functional thinking does have its place, the primary aspect of the non physical aspects of being human that yoga practice requires is the feeling faculty of awareness. ‘Feeling’ meaning not just the kinetic sense of touch but the direct perception of any sensory impressions. Of course you can’t demand this. You can’t command it. You can’t say: ‘I will not think, I will only feel.’ Obviously you’re thinking when you say that. If you say: ‘Well I will not think when I’ve finished saying that to myself,’ within a second or two you’ll be saying to yourself something about bananas, perhaps. Or you’ll be saying: ‘I’m not thinking, I managed not to think for a second and a half,’ or whatever.

So soon it becomes apparent, when we relax into mental activity without trying to impose on it, control, or evaluate it, that we are not in control of our minds. This is perhaps the most significant insight that meditation can deliver. However, this doesn’t mean that the dysfunctional tendency of the mind cannot be diminished. That we are at the mercy of the dysfunctionality of our minds. Not at all. It just means that we are not in control of our minds. Something else is in control of our minds. When we see what, it does not have to be difficult to relinquish that dysfunctionality. Because what is in control of our minds is life as a whole. Our life, set within the totality of all life, determines what thoughts come up in what moments.

And life has its own impetus. Life has its own nature. We can apply words to that. We could say for example that life is the tendency to grow. Or that life is the tendency to express. Life is the tendency towards wholeness or that life is the tendency towards integration. ‘Entropy’ is a word that’s been bandied about by scientists for so long and given such a high significance. Even biologists who study life don’t seem to have been able to redress the balance and point out that yes, it may well be that inert matter is fundamentally entropic but that organic matter is not entropic. That life is a tendency towards wholeness. And at the heart of life is awareness. If this were not so there would be no rabbits. Rabbits depend upon their awareness to protect them from dogs, foxes and owls. Not just their instincts, but awareness. Awareness is fundamental to sentient life just as organisation or expression is to organic life. Awareness also is, like life, a tendency or an invitation towards wholeness. Awareness is actually the fundamental principle of integration and wholeness. So when you see the dysfunctionality of your mind, when you see clearly in the light of your awareness the irrelevance of so much of your thinking, that seeing diminishes it naturally.

So there is no need to attempt to control or purify our minds. We can’t control or purify our minds. Our mind is an expression of the impulse towards wholeness. Our mind in its functioning exists in the service of our body, in the service of our survival and in the service of our well-being. So even mental activity has a tendency towards wholeness, is an expression of life. Its dysfunctionality is only truly relinquished in the light of awareness. You could say shining the light of your awareness on your dysfunctionality inherently undermines that dysfunctionality. There’s no more you need to do. And awareness is always enquiring into the possibility of shining its light upon that which is actually happening. That’s what awareness is and does: shines its light on that which is actually happening. So that means all we really need to do relative to the mind is relax, let go of any intention, any imposition, and as a result of our deep and close looking, see clearly. And in the clarity of that seeing, the dysfunctionality of the mind begins to diminish. The habit that it has of constantly reasserting itself begins to be weakened.

So there is no need to go to war with the mind or with thinking. There’s no need to go to war with any aspect of being human. Not with your thinking, desires, attachment or preference. Because you’re not in control of any of these things. Which means that your going to war with them will fail! To bring about the victory that is required will just succeed in keeping you at war, in conflict, keeping you away from peace. But we’ve been so deeply conditioned to feel bad about ourselves. No matter how strongly we might have been invited to feel good, we have also been conditioned to feel bad. That we’ve said the wrong thing many times, done the wrong thing many times. That we shouldn’t have done so many things, said so many things, felt so many things, wanted so many things that we did want, say, do, feel and even think. And this we carry inside us and then go to war with it. Trying to get rid of it, trying to become better. By going to war with it, it’s going to war in the name of peace. We go to war in our minds when we judge our thinking, preferences, attachments, desires and tell ourselves that we should not have them.

Sooner or later if yoga posture practice is utilising the inherent integrity of the body it is going to reveal and bring you face to face with the deeper and more subtle integrities of being human: the mental or the non physical aspect. They too will seek their own integrity. They are seeking their own integrity all the time. Patanjali’s made a very fine analysis of this process with all kinds of Sanskrit terms like samskara, and vasana and pratyaya and karmasayo and all this kind of stuff. the equivalents of which can be found in modern psychiatry also. The main point is that behind all of this there is a huge and irresistible impulse to wholeness, to integration, to well-being and we don’t need to fight for what is allready here. All we need to do is see it, accommodate it and ride it. All we need to do that is to look closely at that which is actually happening through the agency of sensitive honest, open and generous awareness (yama) until we see clearly. In that clear seeing, wholeness comes: wholeness naturally flowers into that seeing.

Any questions?

Why is the term brahmacharya so often interpreted as meaning celibacy?

I’m going to tell you about a scene from the movie Luther, about Martin Luther. So he’s sitting in this attic hiding from the Catholic soldiers who are out looking for him. He’s translating a Bible into German so that local people can read it. He’s talking to someone about the phrase ‘the will of God’. He says: ‘You know this word, this Greek word doesn’t mean ‘will’ necessarily. It can also mean desire. Or lust.’ But when the Greek was translated into English, somebody had to make a choice. They chose ‘will’ because that was their reference point. That things are done from intention and that God is master of the universe through intention. Whereas the Greek word could mean that God was enjoying the universe through desire, or lust. In other words, these ancient words get interpreted from the perspective, from the prejudices of the interpreter.

That’s not to say that brahmacharya does not imply chastity. You could say that chastity or celibacy could be a very particular expression of brahmacharya, especially when it’s taken in a more loose sense to mean not no sex at all but only, no non-exploitative sex. Sex as an expression of harmony is not breaking brahmacharya. Sometimes it’s interpreted like that. Mr Iyengar is a house holder so he has to have sex. Patabhi Jois also. So then they have to tweak their interpretation if it means no sex, but not if it means to walk with God: which is a literal, etymological translation. Of course exploitative sex is to not walk with God. But then any kind of exploitation is to not walk with God. Even bullying people into thinking and acting like you in the name of yoga is not walking with god, is exploitative. And passive aggressive bullying is everywhere in yoga classes. So to narrow it down to only sexual activity is to limit it unncessariuly and even dangerously.

Basically you could say that what brahmacharya means is to not exploit anything. To give yourself totally to what’s there. So in your yoga practice, what’s there is just life functioning as your own bodimind. It doesn’t involve other people. Chastity doesn’t apply. But what applies is: don’t disperse your energy. What’s said about sex is that you shouldn’t have it because it disperses your energy, especially orgasm. But you can do that on your mat just thinking about something else that is not relevant. Your mind and body are split. Your energy is going in this direction and your pain is coming from over here because you’re not paying attention. So the etymology of the phrase brahmacharya is quite simple: charya means to flow or to move; brahma means the creative aspect of the Godhead. It literally means to flow with the creativity of God. So you can go against the flow of the creativity of God in millions of ways including raping somebody or imprisoning somebody in an exploitative sexual relationship or whatever. But there’s much more to it than that.

I used to be very nervous about speaking about this because people have such a strong association of celibacy with brahmacharya. People also have a strong sense of negativity regarding sex and spirituality. That sex is somehow not spiritual, that it is somehow wrong or corrupt or dirty or mundane and not spiritual. This runs very very deep in people. So when you start to speak of brahmacharya as something else, you get a lot of resistance from people. But then I read a book by an Indian sage called Ramesh and in the glossary at the back it said this: brahmacharya does not mean celibacy. It means to walk with God. Then I found almost exactly the same words in a book of talks by Ramana Maharshi. So i started to hide my fear behind their skirts, you know the way we yoga teachers do, name dropping to hide our sense of inadequacy.

I think that if it’s a question of interpretation then later texts would be more open to expressing their point of sexuality in a more open way.

Could be. But I don’t think it’s inherently a function of time. In the end interpretation of spiritual texts is not an academic process. The whole point of spiritual texts is the quality of your experience, the quality of your life. That’s where the interpretation is tested. That’s where it gets its meaning or not. So many interpretations actually just put more weight on people’s shoulders. More ‘should nots‘, more ‘must become differents.’

Who’s vegetarian here? Well you know you really should be because if you’re living off dead animals you’re a bad person! There’s no way you can be spiritual. For sure youre not gonna get the samadhi prize, right? This also is out there very deeply in yoga culture. Actually what it is is fascism. You’re not supposed to eat meat, enjoy sex, like driving fast cars. Everybody with good testosterone function likes driving fast cars! And everybody with any sense would prefer to drive a Saab than a Ford fiesta. This is not an expression of greed or a lack of spirituality. This is an expression of sensitivity to quality of experience. I can remember sitting at the traffic lights at Portobello road in my Saab Turbo convertible with the roof down. This yoga teacher who I’d known for years was walking by. Her jaw dropped and she goes: ‘You’re supposed to be a yoga teacher and you’re driving a £40,000 car!’ What the fuck is that supposed to mean? That you’re supposed to suffer and drive around in a Ford fiesta because you’re a yoga teacher? But these ways of thinking are very deep. So my attitude really is: it doesn’t matter what brahmacharya means. What matters is: does your interpretation help you to harmonise with the impulse of life towards wholeness and to go with it? Or does your interpretation push you further into conflict with life and yourself?