There are many interesting points in the chapter, but here I will discuss just one theme: the old instruction of the "preservation of seed", viz. semen & the magical essence of it. As you may know, that procedure is considered to be of great importance in many occult systems throughout the world.
After relating some very deep metaphysical & cosmological symbolism in the former chapters, the eighth chapter proceeds to give us practices like –
Linga Purâna (8:16, 21–24) wrote:Not indulging in sexual intercourse, mentally, verbally or physically [---] Women are always to be avoided. One should stay far off from them. A shrew person views them as he views the corpses. He should have the same attitude in the sexual intercourse with his own wife, as when discharging the faeces and urine on the ground. There should be no attitude other than this. Woman is like a burning coal; man is like a vessel of ghee. He should always avoid contact with women therefore. If we ponder of this, we shall know that there is no satiety in sexual pleasures. Hence, one should practice detached attitude mentally, physically and verbally.
– And so on. The usual stuff we know from the most of old traditions, including Blavatsky's theosophy, esoteric Christianity, & other familiar forms of occultism.
Nowadays, this instruction seems extremelly bizarre, and seems to lead the yogi (occultist) down the very bad path if he is not of some quite rare psycho-physiological temperament. My hypothesis is that this instructions is what was needed in the old times when there was a need of extra energy to be focused & stored in one's body. Nowadays we live in world where the "seed" is plentiful already, for this seed is both the result & essence of light & action.
We live in a world that is almost always bathing in light, which - as the scientists could tell us, I'm sure - messes up with our older type of brain. Or to say it better, it has very quickly changed how our physical brains work. The same goes with activity. We live not only in the "illuminated" (light-filled) world, but also in a world of ceaseless acitivity. In my eyes, the old patriarchal dream of dominance of male virility, namely the constant energy, constant activity, focusing, efficiency and potency have taken over almost totally and become as a monolithic truth for the new global culture. The virtue of unceasing energy & dynamism.
This is, in many ways, very wrong indeed. Things that the old ones had held as archetypical female virtues have in the recent millennia, centuries and finally decades become less and less understandable in many ways. There is no longer virtue in patience, there must be always more virility. Even the modern feminism is in many ways chauvinistic and honors only the archetypically male attributes. Now, I don't mean this absolutely, but as a trend - a part of the spirit of our time. It is already showing extremely interesting signs of collapsing; of becoming so dense that it is finally starting to crumble. One such sign is the rise of the Left Hand Path philosophies, as I have written in Fosforos and elsewhere; for Satanism is not only "Yang" but even more "Yin" (the dark and the Other).
This, however, seems to have brought us also a very real & essential "Luciferian" ("Light-bearing") awakening. Yang, as we remember, is the "sunny side" of nature; the male essence is basically light. This light is, de facto, the male "seed" or energetical semen, which in the older times had to be conserved carefully but which the people in our time mostly have in abundance.
That was my hypothesis in a nutshell. I certainly do not mean to say that it somehow makes the old discussion pointless - that there would no longer be need to think very carefully one's sexual yoga like all the other ways of one's living - but what I really think that the old demands of asexuality will much more likely create terrible problems than they would result in enlightenment. I don't think - although it would be great - that I am the only one who almost managed to destroy both one's physical, astral, mental and eventually almost the spiritual health by following these old instructions, given in Linga Purâna and elsewhere. So, for the benefit of those new age aspirants who are willing to sacrifice anything to reach the initiations (which is the only way that they can be attained) I think it is very important to ponder & decide which instructions should no longer be practiced to the letter.
But what do you think?