Introduction to chapter 4

[T]hat which could not be suppressed [in the women of the cult], the monthly discharge of their inner depravity…

(Sanderson 1985:202)

And she attains perfection of the body as a result of the practice of vajrolī. This yoga makes good fortune and grants liberation even when pleasure has been enjoyed.

Haṭhapradīpikā 3.101^[1]

Male ascetics are revered throughout Indian literature for retaining their semen and sometimes admonished for releasing it. In the premodern period women are generally considered a danger to men’s asceticism, causing them to lose their ascetic power (tapas) through ejaculation. Pārvatī uses asceticism and erotic appeal to persuade Śiva to ‘lose his seed’ yet women retaining their seed is not a theme in the historical literature. However, the modernday spiritual guru Amma claimed to be ‘pure’ in the sense of not menstruating, and this was taken as a sign of her divinity (Tredwell 2013:153).^[2] Throughout haṭha literature the repetitions of the depletion paradigm insist on the importance of bindu retention. But what of rajas? As we saw in the last chapter rajas is female menstrual blood or sexual fluid. Its use within yoga practice is less clear than bindu. This chapter details the practices associated with rajas for women.

Chapter three was devoted to identifying the nature of rajas, a term that refers to female sexual and menstrual blood and is also understood to occur in men. Chapter three noted how women were instructed to draw it up and protect or preserve it. The driving question of this chapter is to understand what is meant by the instruction to ‘draw upwards and protect’. Corollaries to this question are how the haṭha corpus conceives saṃsāric procreation on the one hand and ‘spiritual embryology’ on the other. As there is very little explanation of the instruction to ‘draw upwards and protect’ I identify accounts of menstrual practice and conception that nuance the haṭha injunction. I believe that female-oriented Daoist internal alchemy, nüdan, offers such a model and include it as a case study in this chapter. As we see there the earliest reference in nüdan to the halting of menstruation is the offer to a girl fleeing unwanted marriage that ‘I will slay your red dragon’. I make two arguments in this chapter. One is that ‘raising rajas’ could be halting menses. The other is the prosaic approach to sex and sexuality in the sources.

Raising Rajas

If we understand ‘raising rajas’ as an exact correlate of the practice for men of vajrolī, i.e. drawing bindu upwards through the penis, then the practice could be one of drawing menses and / or sexual fluid back up into the body once it has been released. Further, and as a consequence of this, ‘raising rajas’ could be a form of menstrual practice that involves altering the menstrual cycle. ‘Raising rajas’ has implications for conception: it might be intended to make conception less likely as a result of sex. While raising rajas alone might not contribute to the prevention of conception, in combination with the time of the menstrual cycle and other instructions on how sex should be undertaken, a reduction in the likelihood of conception is possible. Later female-oriented Chinese inner alchemy, nüdan, gives a detailed account of refining menstrual blood to stop menstruation as the first step in a process of creating a spiritual embryo and delivering it through the head. The techniques attested for such voluntary amenorrhea include ‘contracting’ as also enjoined in haṭha sources. Though there is connectivity in technique, intertextual evidence to link nüdan and haṭha is lacking. The practice of raising rajas involves physical contractions but the physiological implications of the practice are not clear. Like the practice of raising bindu, the practice of raising rajas cannot be understood on an entirely physiological level.

Prosaic attitude to sex: scripting sex and sexuality

The long centuries since the period studied here have seen disgust at and erasure of the sexual practices that the early sources teach. Vajrolīmudrā is the practice of drawing semen, sometimes conjoined with menses, upwards through the penis. Mallinson (2007a:189190n149) notes that Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā 3.39, dated to 1700 (Mallinson 2004:xiii-xiv), understands vajrolīmudrā as a simple posture, Vasu’s 1914 edition of the Śivasaṃhitā omits vajrolīmudrā as ‘an obscene practice indulged in by low class Tantrists’ (Vasu 2014:51), and Reiker’s Haṭhapradīpikā commentary, prepared under Iyengar’s guidance, describes vajrolīmudrā, sahajolīmudrā and amarolīmudrā as ‘obscure and repugnant practices’ (Reiker 1971:127). An example of the erasure of sex is the substitution of ‘woman’ (nārī), evident in all the manuscripts consulted for the recent critical edition, with ‘channel’ (nāḍī) in the Kaivalyadhama edition of the Haṭhapradīpikā. The historical processes that influence the reception and sanitised redactions of the sources are the replacement of the tantric doctrinal framework of most of the early haṭha sources with vedānta, as seen in the Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā (Mallinson 2004:xiv), the influence of British colonial and Christian missionizing’s disapprobation of sex, and the Hindu Renaissance negotiating the parameters of ‘a monolithic homogenous Hinduism’ in dialogue with Christianity (Mallinson 2007a:189-190n149). This disgust at and erasure of sexual practice contrasts with the centring of a hedonistic sexual ecstasy as the pinnacle of practice in neo-tantra. In light of these extremes of reception to come, the pragmatism of the sources on sexual technique is all the more evident in its acceptance of sex and sexuality, extending even to the scripting of women’s sexuality.

The instructions for vajrolī, amarolī and sahajolī are the only techniques in the haṭha corpus that script real relationships between men and women (rather than the stock dismissals characterising female sexuality enumerated below). I evaluate the language used to define these interactions in terms of pleasure and at times force. I find evidence of both. Overall, this practice is said to liberate even though pleasure has been enjoyed. This liberation, while at times bodiless and thus transcendent of the body, also includes liberation as sovereignty over conception, an analysis that has not to date been drawn to the fore. However, the manuscripts upon which this argument is based are only tentatively established and still rather obscure, especially the Dattātreyayogaśāstra. Sex is dealt with in a minority of texts, and even then only with reference to vajrolī. Vajrolī is itself a fringe practice and not always associated with sex. However, from a meta-perspective the traditions comprise male ascetics disinterested in procreation.

Ondračka (2021) remarks that the general absence of women in the haṭha sources contrasts with their sudden appearance in relation to sexual practice. In relation to the Pātañjalayogaśāstra he notes, ‘strict sexual abstinence is a necessary condition for the very possibility of beginning a yoga practice. This was intended only for male ascetics’ (2022:85). He gives two reasons for the apparently contradictory appearance of women in sources which are otherwise concerned with the principle of celibacy: first, ‘the rhetoric of prescriptive texts is one thing, and the social reality quite another’, and second, haṭha yoga ‘opened itself—at least in theory—not only to non-ascetics but even to women’ (2022:85). Thus, we have a contrast with the Pātañjalayogaśāstra’s strict celibacy and a heterogeneous approach in the haṭha sources. Though there is a lacuna on women in general, there is a divergence in sexual practice and a scattering of statements on sexual ethics. Recommendations on celibacy are generally associated with the early stages of the practice and the refrain that liberation is attained though pleasure has been enjoyed reverberates.

Ondračka points to the gap that this chapter addresses when he notes:

[I]t is clear that the vajrolīmudrā is a sexual practice and that a yogi cannot do without a woman. What is more, her role is probably much more important than it appears at first sight. Indeed, it must be added that the origins, history, and full significance of this technique have not yet been sufficiently explored.

He suggests, ‘the interpretive key to the whole technique lies in this tantric function of the vajrolī’ (2022:87). However, I do not seek to locate the logic for the lacuna on female practitioners only in prior materials. Rather, I seek to unpick the social and soteriological implications of sexual practice and gender insofar as the haṭha sources themselves allow.

White has mapped much material in his 2003 Kiss of the Yoginī offering a meta-history of sex and tantra impressive in its reach. In comparison my work is a more modest textual study of a narrower set of sources that nevertheless explores some of the connections he makes for example between Indian and Chinese systems (1993:60-66). In a subsection on ‘conceiving conception’, White raises questions central to this chapter (2003:90-93). His sources are tantric rather than haṭha yogic. He quotes the Manthānabhairava as enjoining male practitioners to consume menstrual blood and breastmilk together (2003:90), which he argues is ‘physiologically impossible for both to be the emissions of the same woman’ (2003:91). However, it is possible to continue to produce breastmilk after menstruation re-occurs subsequent to pregnancy and childbirth, refuting his contention that, ‘As the aphoristic opening of the Manthānabhairava makes clear, Kaula practitioners were aware that when lactation ceases, menstrual flow begins, and vice versa’ (2003:91). He discusses the text’s linking of embryology and identifies conception as the transformation of menstrual blood into breast milk. I think his inclusion of this theme is important and that there are concepts of conception underpinning sexual practice.

White notes, ‘some scholars have viewed the injunction, found in a number of Tantras, to engage in sexual intercourse with menstruating women as a “rhythm method” type of birth control’ (2003:91). This appears an astute observation. He privileges da Vinci and Aristotle for the premodern connection between breastmilk and menstrual fluid (2003:92), before referencing Carakasaṃhitā (2003:93) on ‘the biological truth—known in India since at least the time of the Caraka Saṃhitā—that an embryo is conceived through the intermingling of male and female sexual fluids, which, combined, form the “drop,” the zygote that gives rise to a new being’ (2003:93). This is the view of conception set out below in the Siddhasiddhāntapaddhati.

I have only found one scholar who interprets tantric practice as women retaining their menses and am not surprised she is a Sinologist. Despeux, in discussing Daoist sources notes, 'Other traditions, in India for instance, also insist on the importance of halting menses in women: the power of a yogi’s tantric partner increases as she retains her monthly discharge’ (Despeux 2016:170). Despeux bases this assertion on Darmon’s work (2003:218) which is also used by Mallinson (2018). Despeux describes Darmon’s sources as tantric not haṭha but I view them—the Haṭhapradīpikā and Haṭharatnāvalī—as haṭha. Despeux does not specify what she means by ‘halting menstruation’ or make a connection with voluntary amenorrhea in nüdan. As we explore the data from the Indian and Chinese sources it may be too speculative to suggest that exactly the same practice is implied in the Indian as the Chinese, i.e. voluntary amenorrhea or permanently halting menstruation, but nevertheless the comparison helps analyse the haṭha account.

Langenberg (2018) analyses the natal preoccupation of Buddhist sources in their choices of whether to condemn sexual activity: the Buddhist vinaya punishes sex that is potentially procreative more harshly than non-procreative sex, for example homosexual sex or sex with a doll: ‘sexual behaviour, no matter how pleasurable, is taken less seriously if it is not likely to result in potentially heterosexual intercourse’ (2018:14).^[3] I think a similar logic is at play in the haṭha sources where it is possible to extrapolate from their instructions on sex that it is reproduction that is to be avoided. Further, women in the haṭha sources appear to be doing the same practices for the same purposes as their male counterparts: retention of vital essence and birth-control (whether sexual activity is undertaken voluntarily or involuntarily, and whether in mundane or ritual contexts). There is evidence for avoiding procreation as unyogic for example in the Amṛtasiddhi, but there is not the horror that Buddhism attributes to the female form, the sexual act, foetal development, childbirth—in fact the entire life cycle of a human being (Langenberg 2017). This is also reflected in the Jainism of the eleventh-century Jñānārṇava (Jain 2017) and the seventeenth-century Yuktiprabodha (Jaini 1991).

Spiritual embryology

The bindu-rajas model of the yoga body appears to operate on the basis of a reversal of mundane procreation to effect a ‘reversal of embryology’ or ‘spiritual embryology’. My use of the term is inspired by the practices of Chinese inner alchemy that detail the creation of a golden embryo which the practitioner gestates for ten months before giving birth to through the head (Steavu and Andreeva 2015). Scattered references can be found to concepts of spiritual embryology in literature adjacent to yoga studies. In reference not to the yogic body but to Freud, Eliade uses the term ‘spiritual embryology’ (1963). Goudriaan and Gupta use the phrase ‘religious embryology’ to describe the contents of the Prapañcasāra’s chapter two (1981:133). Faure footnotes a reference to ‘the old myths of “sacred embryology”’ that were put to rest after the 1875 work of Van Beneden on “the true nature of fecundation”’ (Faure 2003:35n156). As far as I am aware no scholar has considered the applicability of this term to the processes of haṭha yoga which I undertake in this chapter.

Non-ejaculation

By way of the last item in this literature review I note the more extensive literature on male ejaculation and non-ejaculation than exists in relation to women. Mallinson gives much data identifying whether non-ejaculation is practised in celibate or sexual contexts (2020a) and Hirmer summarises the literature noting, ‘whereas for White semen is expelled but, importantly, reabsorbed along with female fluids (2003: 81–85), Caldwell, writing about her guru’s sexual rites, relays, ‘by all accounts he never attained an erection or ejaculation’ (2001:39); similarly, Hatley suggests, ‘the male practitioner exposes himself to…sexual temptation without fully consummating the act’ (2016: 4)’ (2022b). Concerns with erection, ejaculation and fertility of male gurus continue into the modern-day courtroom and medical verification procedures (India Today 2013, Deccan Chronicle 2014).^[4] This connects with menstruation, considered a function of sexual desire in Jainism and Daoism, and likely informing Amma’s claim not to menstruate. However, neither primary nor secondary sources specify this in relation to haṭha yoga.

This chapter is arranged in three sections: first understandings of conception, second the technique for raising rajas and third the case study of nüdan, before concluding on the prosaics of sex with reference to amarolī and sahajolī.

Footnotes and references:

[back to top]

[1]:

Haṭhapradīpikā 3.101 dehasiddhiṃ ca labhate vajrolyabhyāsayogataḥ | ayaṃ śubhakaro yogo bhoge bhukte’pi muktidaḥ || I infer the female pronoun as the previous verses have described the practice of vajrolī for the yoginī.

[2]:

‘Regarding the claim in A.’s biography that A., due to her divinity stopped menstruating at the onset of her bhavas, what Gail reports is true’ (Albohair 2021:82). ‘Before meeting Amma, I was told she was “pure,” meaning free of her monthly menstruation. This purity was proof of her divinity.’ (Tredwell 2013:153). Contrasting with Amma’s assertion of amenorrhea brought on by religious practice is her campaigning work on menstrual hygiene and re-usable sanitary pads (https://www.amritapuri.org/81578/22saukhyam.aum accessed 4 May 2023). Thanks to Lucia for making me aware of this case, personal communication, 4 August 2022.

[3]:

Page numbers refer to the preprint version.

[4]:

Medical reports prove Nithyananda’s potency, confirm him as a man (2014) Deccan Chronicle, 27 November, Available at: https://www.deccanchronicle.com/141127/nation-crime/article/medical-reports-provenithyananda%E2%80%99s-potency-confirm-him-man?infinitescroll=1 (accessed 14 February 2024).—Asaram tells police he is impotent, potency test says he has active libido (2013) India Today, 2 September, Available at: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/north/story/asaram-tells-police-he-is-impotent-209612-2013-0901 (accessed 14 February 2024).—Asaram taken for potency test, refuses to cooperate (2013) Available at: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ahmedabad/asaram-taken-for-potency-test-refuses-to-cooperate/ (accessed 5 August 2022). Thanks to Lucia for these references, 4 August 2022.