Man moving with God- that is Brahmacharya! Can life hold a higher privilege ? Brahmacharya was the foundation of Hindu education in the long ego. Then was India truly great.
Today, she wanders from distraction to distraction. Today, her students are after sensation, her young men after bhoga (sense indulgence). Today the needs tapasvis (men of self control) and brahmacharis to take her out of chaos into the dawn of a new era.
Everyone in ancient India was to remain in the brahmacharya ashrama up to twenty five years. Then he could marry. Many preferred to be in the brahmacharya ashrama up to thirty, some even upto forty years. Some were life long brahmacharis.
Brahmacharya is the means whereby the Spirit is unfolded in the soul of man. This unfolding takes place not through repression or rejection but transformation or transmulation of the senses. They must not be despised. The spirit needs the senses. The purpose of evolution is not to renounce matter but to take it up gradually into the life of the Spirit. To surrender yourself to the domination of matter is unspiritual. To despise matter is also unspiritual. And when you reject the senses with contempt, believe me, they will someday take revenge.
Repression becomes expression someday. The kingdom of the pure is not the kingdom of the violent. Violence calls up counter violence, a psychic storm : and the man unable to overcome it, gets a fall as great as the great height he has climbed !
Learn to transmute the senses gradually. Learn to be patient with yourself. Brahmacharya in this evolving world, is also, a matter of evolution . Build up brahmacharya carefully, steadity, painfully, progressively ! Build as do the coral builders. Build as do the skilled architects. Lay the foundation broad and strong in daily Sadhanas (disciplines). The better the foundation, the stronger will be soul to stand all psychic storms.
Practise the triple brahmacharya of speech, mind and heart :-
- Brahmacharya of speech :- Strive to be truthful even in small details. Avoid exaggeration and gossip. Speak kindly and with a view of help others. Gradually go through purificatory disciplines so that when you speak. Your dominant aspiration is to help cosmic evolution.
- Brahmacharya of the mind :- Develop the power of thinking but drive out all egoism. Think hard but not to win personal advantage or popular applause. Then may you develop that creative thinking which makes a man a co-worker with the Lord in His Plan of building the nations.
- Brahmacharya of the heart :- Rich, inexpressibly rich, is he who has developed brahmacharya of the heart. For, his life is filled with love. He is not noisy. He shuns all sensationalism, all exhibitionism. He works with quite dignity, He prays unostentatiously. He has learnt the fine art of self-concealment. He is gentle, patient, strong. His speech and thoughts are charged with a truly creative shakti, building forms of beauty and sending our healing vibrations to all. His eyes shine with a bright mystic light.
Blessed is such a brahmachari. For he has passed through the fire of passion and been purified like thrice-purified gold. He has battled and overcome and rising above the battle, command with gods. He has played the hero and become as a child, as a little one of the Lord.
And of such, verily, is the Kingdom of Heaven !