This lecture is an exciting one: we’re going to discuss sex and more specifically sexual repression! To what extent are all spiritual experiences just hallucinations caused by repression, narcissism and grandiosity as the Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysts suggest?
As spiritual practitioners we must take these kinds of critiques seriously and really engage thoughtfully with them since they can show us the deepest aspects of spirituality as it relates to very complex human psyche!

We're discussing 10 different Western scholars, including Freud and Lacan to consider 4 arguments from the materialist for why all religion is repressed sexuality, drawing from Swami Tyagīshananda's commentary on the Bhakti Sutra.
Then we are going to offer levels and levels of analysis in response to all for arguments making the case for the existence of a distinctly "religious" instinct common to all life and manifest to a greater degree in certain "genius" type individuals.
Then, I'm going to try to use some Freudian reductionist language to say to the materialist: all instincts reduce to the sex instinct but the sex instinct must itself ultimately reduce to, what I'll call, the Urge to Transcendence.

This is one lecture in a wider lecture series on the Bhakti Sutra of Narada. You can watch the other lectures in this series and keep up with the upcoming ones here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/narada-bhakti-80688555?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Support the show

Lectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST
Use this link and I will see you there:
https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815

For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:
https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnish

To get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Is Religion Just Sexual Repression?