http://www.aypsite.org/T4.html
Hundreds of years ago the great reviver of yoga in India, Shankara, said, “Even the greatest yogi cannot gaze into the eyes of a beautiful woman without having his seed jump.”
i have done some readin of teh beautiful and the ecstatic stuff offered at ayp and my pranams to yogani for doin this.
but somethings been bothering me lately … is the above line from lesson 4 of tantra yoga on ayp.
so does it mean that great yogi’s like yukteshwar and paramhansaji succembed to the beautties and curves of the female body? i remember readin a line from autibography where yogananda quotes his guru sayin ‘do not allow urself to be marred by the beauty of a beautiful face… don’t let teh frogs of desires kick u around’ or somethin like that …
so acc to mr.yogani and the shankaracharya back then, were the yogis like yukteshwar and yoganandaji not immune to these things? i remmember readin through the book and the yss/srf lessons about the COMPLETE mastery over sex. and that i red was when the muladhar chakra is fully awakened by kundalini or somethin like that.
please discuss/shed light
my first post on this great forum … greetings to u all! hopin to get guidance from the guru within me and w/o.
Welcome to the forum fcry64!
I think the “complete mastery of sex” comes as a side effect of regular practices, and not from any attempts to master sex. Of course, witholding sexual energy is very good for practices, both tantra and regular meditation and pranayama. But any mental efforts to master sexual thoughts are likely to cause bad effects because of concentrating on it.
I think that is what your Shankara quote is saying.
“Even the greatest yogi cannot gaze into the eyes of a beautiful woman without having his seed jump.”
I think “seed jump” does not necessarily mean ejaculation, but probably sexual attraction. Then what you do with that is a personal decision; just the attraction is uncontrollable.
I think modern society attaches less stigma to sex than it used to, so it is easier for us to not make a big deal out of it. Then we can concentrate more on using the energy for spiritual purposes rather than struggling with abstaining and punishing ourselves for not being able to control it.
I think what Yogananda was saying is if you indulge too much and are obsessed with sex it takes away from your spiritual energy. Your highest ideal must be spiritual, not sexual. But no need to punish yourself for mistakes, like in meditation, just correct your course and press on!
thanks for the reply etherfish. 
i don’t want to bring in any superimposition or teh forceful control of teh sexual desire or anyhting here.
i am just concerned about yogani(with all due respect) quoting shankaracharya sayin teh spiritual giants havin such desires(upon the sight of beautiful woman) and having their ‘seed jumps’. i am just bothered due to that. complete mastery over sex was talked about by yoganandaji in his book… even in the yss/srf lessons too… see my main post again …
by mastery i mean the mastery over the desire itself, not the methods to control it… in the lessons it was given that kundalini awakening or the upturning of the muladhar due to the passage of kundalini through it is the only way to get past the sexual desire.
Welcome Fcry64!
The methods of yoga are what enable us to reach “mastery over the desire,” as you call it. It would be more accurate to call it “transcending the desire.” The AYP approach to full-scope yoga covers the preservation and cultivation of sexual energy (regardless of sexual lifestyle) along with the necessary cultivation of inner silence and ecstatic conductivity and radiance. Prior to and during all of that is our bhakti (spiritual desire). The combination of all these means leads to a transcendence of the dominance of reproductive sex.
Sex will always be there in the neurobiology, but our intention with that energy and its manifestation can be transformed in stillness, as Etherfish has discussed. In time, it becomes automatic. Then there need not be any fear or obsession about the biological response. Like everything else in time and space, it becomes a wave on the ocean of our infinite Being, and we cannot be swept away by it any more than the ocean can be swept away by one of its waves.
When Shankara’s statement is taken in this context, it makes perfect sense. Remember, he was still a young man at the height of his great mission. From the standpoint of self-identified awareness (“I am the body”), I can see that Shankara’s statement could be disturbing. But here we are talking about going far beyond the limits of self-identification with the body, and that is where Shankara was speaking from also. It is much better to be honest about our urges and transcend them by effective means, than to be fighting with them on the surface level of mind where they can never be mastered.
Wishing you all the best on your path. Enjoy!
The guru is in you.
thanks for teh beautiful reply yoganiji. hope i dint hurt anyone her eor intend too… sayin this cause i thought maybe some would be… and i found it kinda disturbing myself regardin this about teh saints…
but shankaracharya as a young man … did he have his seed jump? can anyone provide teh exact statement he did in hindi or sanskrit or wichever lang it is?
i got teh point of teh arousal and then ‘the way the arousal is being automatically dealt with in saints/high end yogis’…but my question remains…
does teh arousal still persist in them? even after so much purification and sadhana? its a big deal for me…this question… but am not tryin to make one outta it for others… i just wanna know the truth. pls help.
thanks to yoganiji again for sheddin light on this matter in such a nice way!
i read in autobiography that saints later live in non stop nirvikalpa samadhi… so even in that state such things pop up?(yeha though as yogiji pointed out that they are dealth with automtically, and the desirer is being like the ocean, undisturbed by its own waves)
yeah… am talkin about the sexual attraction only … the statement would be pretty hyperbolic if ejaculation were teh meanin of seed jump. sexual attraction is uncontrollable even for them … is my intent of puttin forth this topic.
You might enjoy this video of Saida talking about sexual attraction and making it spiritual:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1nn-PHA0pg
My seed jumped watching this video 
Yes she is attractive.
But did you get the point of what she is saying?
Part of what makes her attractive is retention of sexual energy, and sending it through her whole body.
Yes. Sorry, I didn’t mean to dismiss or diminish what she was saying. I found her message consistent with the tantric principles discussed here. It was nice to hear her view on the topic.
u r deviating from teh topic bro(or sis i dunno, dnt have teh intuit to know:P)
taking my example, when i was like 16 or something i started getting this strong motherly vibe thingy whenever i looked at women, beautiful or ugly and some rise in ‘ecstatic conductivity’ too … i think i could convert the sexual arousal spontaneously w/o any technique(or maybe that wasn’t sexual arousal and conversion but some direct experience can’t say) to some form of short termed bliss … at 17 or mid 16 i read autobiography of a yogi and had some changin experinces before and after i read teh book… thats off topic though. am 22 now and no spiritual progress … wasted all those years gaming an stuff.
[edit: put ecstatic conductivity in “‘’”]
My seed jumped watching this video
hehe.. mine dint. felt nice about saida though .. when she talks about caring and stuff n the arousal being a gift given by teh opposite sex etc.. good girl :P
My seed jumped watching this video
I too got somewhat distracted.....lol... to fcry64, & All those interested or intrigued, If I set up a file sharing site i can link you to a document i used to use( it was written by a swami as he says in the document for the celibate and non-celibate monks in his care.celibacy was then a life-style choice,not synonymous with bhramacharya as many people view it.). I'm not sure if it bears any resemblance to any of yogani's tantra lessons( perhaps lesson 33 ,though i was using it solo before other practices,swirling the energy as milky white light in the head during a little kumbhaka before returning it to base with breath..pre-orgasmic mode, as yogani perhaps puts it..i.e one engages in arousal , then does taoist deer pelvic thrust excericse( the penis less excited & returning it to more flaccid state) then back to stimulation, then back to the deer excercisees, and so on ,building gradually up the base energies to transmutate them, then after about 10-12 mins when one is pretty near about ot climax one does just one round of what now looks like SbP.(At least this is how i interpreted the instructions).The conversion to ojas possibly occurs at this point. With a little pracitce the desire to release seed is overcome and a new neurobiology emerges.Erections stay for longer,last longer..your sex life is transformed completley to a quite different level and another dimension.Ojas/spiritual energy was possibly created when i done it and the energy revenue was enormous- though no overload feeling as such . i could subsist on very little sleep for example 3 hours per night,not feel tired at all during the day say, get up at 4am and meditate for another 3 hours, no problem.even felt like 10 mins)One can become like Saida but it takes disipline and traning as part of a full-scope system/set of yoga practices. doing it solo does means it's all in your hands,and can be integrated with other P's but could be tricky doing it without othersliving in proximity to you thikning you're possibly a nymphomaniac. :grin: I remember one poster said if we knew how to conquer desire it would hav been posted by now and shared, and i want to hear it. One raises sexual enrgies higher up the system, to higher frequencies to fill our whole being, so we do indeed transcend our desires, and it is very liberating indeed.Also i'm thinking that lust orginates as a thought in the mind-purification and transmutation mean we are no longer obsessed by reproductive sex.when we transmutate we are aleady having sex 24/7 internally. we can feel the orgasm but we are not swept away by it or overwhelemd. we just relax with it,remain disspassionate about it,not be controlled by it.(one of tantra's paradoxes) in unreflexive awareness. Eventually the man can decide whether he want to lose his seed,with the being/body subsumed by it's own perpetual orgasm.. one can thus see through much ilussion & suffering in the world, the source of which is much neurosis about sex and related desire. A.
fcry64, thank you very much for opening this topic. I reacted on that sentence as well when I read the book, just as you did, and I’m glad to read Yogani’s response here! It’s truly easy to misinterpret from a mind point of view!
(On Saida: I didn’t find her message consistent with the tantric principles discussed here, when I read closer on her site. The taoist methods she’s exploring are mainly focussed on orgasms, and orgasmic training, emphazising increased pleasure. In AYP we practice pre-orgasmic tantra, avoiding any type of peak release. Whole different story, in my view, although it is off topic…)
Sorry I haven’t investigated her any further than the video. I assumed since she was talking about accessing orgasmic energy through breathing and smiling, and since she said she takes sexual energy and sends it through her whole body and doesn’t feel obligated to connect it to intercourse or stimulation, that her views were similar to pre-orgasmic retention. What site did you look at?
Hi Ether,
I agree, it sounds good what she says on the video, but the energies I pick up from here are not very deep, so I went on to read the articles on her site:
http://www.thedesiletsmethod.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=17&Itemid=29
From my understanding and interpretation, she uses the “big terms” but are more into a play with energies so far, which taoist methods are very much about… not what I would call a tantric union on the level we mostly discuss here. But that’s a crude judgement based on my limited understanding of her ideas… 
I might be totally on a little bike out cycling… Just wanted to hit on someone today… happened to be on her! 
glad i could serve u this way dude. hmm … i dnt
recall yoganandaji quoting a similar line like this statement shankaracharya did. maybe high end saints like ramkrishna(for eg) have done away with this desire totally … and that shankaracharya could be wrong…? confusing 
desire or the opp. sex attraction i mean… .