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The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book 2 - The Steps to Union
38. By abstention from incontinence, energy is acquired. Incontinence is usually regarded as the dissipation of the vitality or the virility of the animal nature. The power to create upon the physical plane and to perpetuate the race is the highest physical act of which man is capable. The dissipation of the vital powers through loose living and incontinence is the great sin against the physical body. It involves the failure to recognize the importance of the procreative act, the inability to [199] resist the lower desires and pleasures, and a loss of self control. The results of this failure are apparent throughout the human family at this time in the low health average, in the full hospitals, and the diseased, enfeebled and anemic men, women and children everywhere to be found. There is little conservation of energy, and the very words "dissipation" and dissipated men" carry a lesson. The first thing a disciple has to do is to learn the true nature of creation and to conserve his energy. Celibacy is not enjoined. Self-control is. In the relatively short cycle of lives, however, in which the aspirant fits himself to tread the path, he may have to pass a life or maybe several in a definite abstention from the act of procreation in order to learn complete control and to demonstrate the fact that he has completely subdued the lower sex nature. The right use of the sex principle along with entire conformity to the law of the land is characteristic of every true aspirant. Apart from a consideration of this subject along the lines of the conservation of energy, there is another angle from which the aspirant approaches the problem and that is the transmutation of the vital principle (as manifested through the physical organism) into the dynamic demonstration of it as manifested through the organ of sound, or creation, through the word, the work of the true magician. There is as all students of occultism know, a close connection between the organs of generation and the [200] third major center, the throat center. This is apparent physiologically in the change of voice seen during the adolescent period. Through the true conservation of energy and abstention from incontinence, the yogi becomes a creator on the mental plane through the use of the word and of sounds, and the energy which can be dissipated through the activity of the lower center is concentrated and transmuted into the great creative work of the magician. This is done through continence, Pure living and clean thinking, and not through any perversions of occult truth such as sex magic and the enormities of the sex perversions of various so-called occult schools. The latter are on the black path and do not lead to the portal of initiation.
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