Loving/Desiring Neutrality

Neutrality in sensual preference is recommended in the Bhagavad Gita, where duality means heat/cold, the opposite ranges of sensual preference. Here is a verse (my English translation):

जितात्मनः प्रशान्तस्य

परमात्मा समाहितः ।

शीतोष्णसुखदुःखेषु

तथा मानावमानयोः ॥६.७॥

jitātmanaḥ praśāntasya

paramātmā samāhitaḥ

śītoṣṇasukhaduḥkheṣu

tathā mānāvamānayoḥ (6.7)

jitātmanaḥ — of the self-controlled person; praśāntasya — of the person who is peaceful; paramātmā — the directive part of the self; samāhitaḥ — composed; śītoṣṇasukhaduḥkheṣu = śīta — cold + uṣṇa — heat + sukha — pleasure + duḥkheṣu — in pain; tathā — also; mānāvamānayoḥ = māna — honor + avamānayoḥ — in dishonor

The directive part of a self-controlled, peaceful person remains composed in the cold, heat, pleasure, pain, and also in honor and dishonor. (6.7)

When captured by a phase of these dualities the self feels discomfort if its senses prefer not to be in the influence. It feels enjoyment (pleasure) when the senses find the influence to be pleasant. The recommendation about this is that the self should have a neutral attitude to either phase of capture.

The unpleasantness will be there, the desirability will be there, the pain or pleasure will be there, but the self should remain in a mood of neutrality.

Do we agree with this or should the self run away if it can when the influence is discomforting and should the self embrace the experience tightly when the influence is pleasing?

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I was with some yogis in the astral world recently when one suggested that there should be a kriya practice which deals with the self’s attitude to neutrality. He pointed out that there is little instruction about the mood of neutrality even though there is instruction about being neutral to sensual extremes.

His view was that there is a gap in the teaching in this regard, because even though Bhagavad Gita recommends that the self should remain in the neutral existential location in reference to the sensual dualities, still the Gita does not hammer home the need for loving and desiring neutrality. This ascetic said that he made much progress reforming his self’s behavior and approach by training it to love and desire neutrality. His claim was that this did not happen merely by stationing the self in a neutral mood when it was confronted with what it disliked or loved sensually, because the self executes the instruction to remain in the sensually neutral position but does not, by that act alone, develop a taste for neutrality. Instead it holds on to its liking and disliking of particular sensual extremes, which makes it a repeated task when it is confronted with either extreme.

The ascetic said that the yogis should industriously practice attaching the self to neutral states but that these states must be neutral bliss states. He explained that it would be like using sugarcane juice which has no sweetness which is craved by the taste buds in the mouth of the body. The yogi should habituated himself to loving such sweet-less cane juice, so that it becomes the desirable preference over even the sweet cane juice which the taste buds naturally crave.

This training is necessary because the default preference for tasting cane juice proved to be disastrous for the self, such that Krishna instructed detachment from it in the Bhagavad Gita.

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Apart from this method introduced by the astral yogi, which he claimed to have pioneered, there is another related experience.

During bhastrika breath-infusion practice, there are some kundalini bursts which have a neutral bliss energy. It is a bliss energy but it is barely perceptible because it does not have the intense pleasure flashing through it. Most of these experiences are so subtle that the student misses most of them, unless that student is very attentive during practice as a matter of course. I can say for a fact that most students miss this because of inattentiveness and mostly because of former addiction to sex pleasure climax experience in this and other lives.

The way nature would have it is that sex pleasure climax experience is undoubtedly the top reference for pleasure in these life forms, not just in the human form but in that of other mammals and other species. Since the self was conditioned to that reference, it is natural and in order that it should have that as the supreme reference for pleasure.

Hence no matter what students say, and not matter how elevated they rate themselves, still the reference for pleasure remains what nature deemed it to be which is sex pleasure climax experience. It is a task to remove this, to scrub this our or to erase and replace it with something else. In the first place, nature has no intention of removing sex experience as the reference which means that the idea of it being removed by will power is illusion and will not take place. It will not happen merely by wanting it to be removed. Nature will obey no such commands from the individual. Hence what will happen is that the self will format a small area in the psyche, where the self hems itself in with this idea that it will not use sex pleasure as the reference. And nature will simply ignore this action of the self and continue its program with the psyche.

When doing breath infusion practice, if the student is attentive, if the student really wants to learn, if the student stops being pig-headed and listens to more advanced yogis, the student will capture moments when kundalini burst into a neutral bliss aspect which is completely transcendental. Then the student will focus on that and cause the perception of that to be imbibed deeply by the self as a new kind of nourishing pleasure-food for the self. The yogi will cause the self to take in this neutral bliss aspect just as if it were sex pleasure experience or some other type of intense compelling bliss experience. But this requires years of training for this to be rooted into the self so that the default reference of nature is erased out.