Lust to love, the alchemy process
Lust, like anger, is a tremendous energy. Actually, until such time when you understand what lust is and how it can be transformed, any action that you do is lustful. Even if you pick up a pen, it is lustful; if you are petting a small child, it is lustful. There is a certain animal nature in it because your energy is still driven by greed. It has not transformed into higher energy.
In the same way like how knowledge about anger reduces anger, so also, knowledge about lust reduces lust, because both are the same energy! The problem with lust and sex is, they have been magnified and imagined to be much more than what they are. Because of suppression, sex is made out to be much more than it is. There starts the whole problem. It has been contaminated to a great extent by media.
When your lust is not accepted by the other, it turns into anger against that person. That is why you read newspaper reports of teenage boys throwing acid on the faces of girls who have rejected them.
Society has always made divisions like lower humans and higher humans. Any one with passion or lust is said to be a lower human. There is no lower or higher; a transformation has to happen, that's all.
The people who go about setting these moral standards are simply people who pretend to be moralists. They are either afraid to go behind these feelings or guilty to go behind them and so they pass off as moralists. They become the ones who set standards like low and high in society.
Knowledge about lust reduces lust, because both are the same energy!
Just understand that there is no low or high. The moment you think that you are low, you start fighting with that feeling and it becomes very difficult for you to overcome it.
When people try to impose the inferior and superior feelings in you, remember that every individual is a part of Existence and no one is inferior or superior to anyone. It is only when you forget this truth that you will use these kinds of words.
Lust is a result of deep ignorance. The process of changing lust to love is an alchemy process. Alchemy is the process of changing any base metal to a higher metal. Similarly, changing our base emotion that is lust to the highest emotion we are capable of, that is love, is an alchemy process. It is the ultimate alchemy.
Let me narrate to you something that actually happened to me when I was wandering in the Himalayas:
The moment you think that you are low, you start fighting with that feeling and it becomes very difficult for you to overcome it.
In the Himalayas, I used to simply walk anywhere I felt like. My belongings were very few and I used to wander and sleep anywhere at night. I used to simply grip the branches and roots of trees and climb! I met many sages during that period.
On one such occasion, I met a sage, very barely dressed, with matted locks and with a fierce expression. He was a Naga Baba, belonging to the Naga sect of sages.
I was somehow attracted to him and went near him.
At that time I did not know much spoken Hindi, but I managed to converse with him in my broken Hindi. I was with him for a few days.
All day long, he would smoke his hookah. I was watching him and was amazed at what he was doing.
He would drop two copper coins in his hookah, smoke for some time and then empty his pipe and two gold coins would drop out!
He would then sell the two gold coins and get more copper coins and repeat the process!
I asked him how it happened.
He did not answer but simply gave me the pipe. Somehow, the smell of tobacco or alcohol never agreed with my system at any time, so I just took a few steps backwards. I told him that I had come to the Himalayas for meditation and enlightenment and I was not interested in smoking or gold coins.
He looked at me and spoke in Tamil for the first time: 'Angam pazhuthaal thangam pazhukkum' which means: 'When your being ripens, gold will ripen.'
I was speechless. I wondered how he knew that I knew Tamil.
He playfully blew smoke rings into my face. I was in deep bliss for three days after that.
Changing copper to gold is an alchemy process. It is an alchemy process in the outer world. The alchemy in the inner world is all about changing our base energies to higher spiritual energies. When you master the art of transforming your base energies to spiritual energies, you can transform copper to gold; it is no big deal. When you master the inner alchemy process, the outer alchemies are
When you master the inner alchemy process, the outer alchemies are nothing. play. I have narrated this incident to you only to make you nothing. They become just child's understand the concept of alchemy and not for you to pursue any outer world alchemies! Outer world alchemies are ordinary. The inner world alchemy is the one that makes you a real master.
What is it that actually happens in the process of alchemy with metals? First, the impurities from the base metal are removed. Then some components are added and the whole thing is taken through a process. At the end of it, the base metal becomes a higher metal.
Our animal emotions have to be changed to divine emotions. We all have lust, which is an animal emotion. At least animals have pure lust. They simply forget the whole world when they are having a relationship. But for us, even our lust is not pure. Lust is mixed with feelings of guilt and unsure desire all the time.
Either our conditionings from the past make us feel guilty and we withdraw, or intense desire to continue into the future makes us indulge, only to feel guilty again. It is a vicious cycle of pulling and pushing as a result of which the lust is contaminated. It is not pure.
Always if you notice, the moment you fulfill your imagination, you are engulfed by guilt. That is why sex makes you feel guilty. Family instills the first sense of guilt in you when you are a child. Then, you master the art of creating guilt for yourself!