Guiding Light: The Divine in every aspect of life

There are two basic instincts in human beings — one is food; the other is sex. These you have been doing in all your lifetimes: when you were an animal and now as a human being. You are born out of these two — food and sex. In India, it has been beautifully connected with Divinity. The ancient people linked that to God so that no aspect in you remains away from God.

Food is connected with God. In the Upanishads, it is said ‘Food is God’. No festival in India goes without food. When you consider food as God you will not overeat or stuff food but you will eat with so much honor. Similarly, sex is also connected with God. One often tends to keep sex separate from God. Sex is often thought of as part of material life. But in India, the ancient people linked sex to god so that no aspect in us, not even an instinct as basic as sex, remained from God. Prakriti (nature) and Purusha (consciousness) interplay all the time. Your body and soul. Your body is female and your soul is male. So their coupling is happening all the time. And seeing that union within oneself is Samadhi. In India when you go to any temple anywhere you find both the aspects, Shiva and Parvathi, Radha and Krishna - Prakrathi Purusha - Consciousness and matter. This is to first recognise the duality and then see the unity. They are not two, they are not different, they are two sides of the same coin. You are complete.

This is an ancient thought. When you honour food and sex as sacred and consider it as part of Divinity then the aggression, obsession and lust in you disappears, and surrender, gratefulness and love dawn in you. Don’t keep any corner of your existence away from Divinity. The Divine should be interwoven into every aspect of your life and this is called Brahmacharya, which means moving in the infinity, uniting with the infinity.