Gnosis in a Hundred PagesPage 43 of 100 · Part III

Part III · The energy

What chastity means here

Chastity here is not a life without love. It means not spending the creative energy, in the body or in the imagination.

Read to me

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A crowded street at dusk, and eyes that rest where they choose.

The word chastity has a bad name. It suggests cold beds, disapproval and a life without touch. That is not what the tradition means by it.

Here chastity means one thing: the creative energy is not spent. A couple practicing page 40 is chaste. A single person practicing page 41 is chaste. A person who never touches anyone but lives on fantasy is not.

That last point surprises people. The books teach that chastity begins in the imagination, long before the body. The energy follows the picture. A fantasy replayed is energy spent in the mind, and what the mind spends, the body feels later.

So the practical work is with the eyes and with pictures. You see someone attractive. That is natural, and nothing to fight. But the next moment matters. Does the gaze linger and undress? Does a scene begin to play? That second moment is where the energy goes, and where it can be kept.

This is not about avoiding beauty. Beauty can be loved openly, the way you love a sunset, without wanting to own it. Lust looks in order to take. Love looks and lets be.

Watching the eyes for one day is one of the most revealing practices in this book. Many people are surprised by how much of their attention goes this way.

Try this

  1. For one whole day, watch your eyes.
  2. Each time your gaze lingers on someone’s body, notice it, without blame.
  3. If a picture starts to play, let it go, and bring your eyes back to the person’s face or to what is in front of you.
  4. Tonight, in the evening review, recall one of those moments. Where did the energy want to go?

Words on this page

Chastity
Here, keeping the creative energy instead of spending it, in body and in imagination. Sub-imagination — the books’ word for the pictures that play in us by themselves.

In the old words

“Absolute chastity is impossible as long as the mechanical sub-imagination exists.”

Fundamental EducationSamael Aun Weor
On the next pageDesire and love feel alike from inside. They are not the same.44. Desire is not love