The Transformation of the Sex Centre and Its Energy

For the practitioner of the integral Yoga, energy is utilized to redirect and shift the standpoint away from the ego-personality into the divine standpoint, and then to effectuate actions to carry out the divine manifestation in the world. Energy dedicated to the enhancement or satisfactions of the ego-personality is therefore ‘wasted’ for this purpose, although it may be, for those not actively engaged in the yoga, a positive effort and activity that they carry out. It is in this context that Sri Aurobindo speaks to sadhaks of the integral yoga when he counsels that the energy that flows through the sex-centre needs to be transformed in order to provide the basic energy needed for these tasks.

While the sadhak can provide the aspiration, and the rejection of movements which spill this energy in vital enjoyment or physical acts, it is only when the higher Force becomes fully active that a complete transformation can be expected. Until that time, the seeker remains within the framework of the ego and its reliance on the usual methods and actions of the physical, vital and mental beings of man.

Sri Aurobindo also clarifies that the supramental transformation is not an enhancement of the ego-personality, a la Nietzsche, but an entirely new action that is not concerned with the small needs, desire, wants, satisfactions, likings and dislikings, enjoyments of the individual personality. ,

Sri Aurobindo writes: “The transformation of the sex-centre and its energy is needed for the physical siddhi; for this is the support in the body of all the mental, vital and physical forces of the nature. It has to be changed into a mass and a movement of intimate Light, creative Power, pure divine Ananda. It is only the bringing down of the supramental Light, Power and Bliss into the centre that can change it. As to the working afterwards, it is the supramental Truth and the creative vision and will of the Divine Mother that will determine it. But it will be a working of the conscious Truth, not of the Darkness and Ignorance to which sexual desire and enjoyment belong; it will be a power of preservation and free desireless radiation of the life-forces and not of their throwing out and waste. Avoid the imagination that the supramental life will be only a heightened satisfaction of the desires of the vital and the body; nothing can be a greater obstacle to the Truth in its descent than this hope of glorification of the animal in the human nature. Mind wants the supramental state to be a confirmation of its own cherished ideas and preconceptions; the vital wants it to be a glorification of its own desires; the physical wants it to be a rich prolongation of its own comforts and pleasures and habits. If it were to be that. it would be only an exaggerated and highly magnified consummation of the animal and the human nature, not a transition from the human into the Divine.”

Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, Chapter 10, Difficulties in Transforming the Nature, Sex, pp 299-308