Does Pornography Affect Spirituality?

The basis of spirituality is knowledge of how to behave not only physically, but psychologically and spiritually. If you want to develop spiritually, then you must examine how you use your body, mind, and imagination: especially sexually.

Pornography might be popular and easy to access, but it has profound connections to slavery, human trafficking, prostitution, and abuse.

In fact, the term pornography comes from a root word porne "prostitute," originally "bought, purchased" for "female slave sold for prostitution." A brothel in ancient Greek was a porneion. Porne and pornos were slaves, bought and sold so the slave master would profit from lust. That business continues today.

The word pornography literally means "depictions of prostitute-slaves."

When we hear the word slavery now, people tend to only think of the enslavement of Africans in previous centuries. According to the Atlantic Slave Trade Database, between 1450 and 1900 (450 years) the Atlantic slave trade took around 12.8 million people.

Yet:

"More than 40 million people were trapped as slaves last year in forced labor and forced marriages, most of them women and girls... Almost three out of every four slaves were women and girls and one in four was a child...  In the past five years, 89 million people suffered in some form of modern slavery, lasting from days to years, the report estimated." - Reuters, 2019

There is more slavery today than ever in our history, it is just behind closed doors. The majority of those slaves are sexually exploited, and are involved with pornography.

Vulnerable people are tricked or forced into prostitution and pornography, and many of them are children. Sexually exploited slaves can be found worldwide, even in the United States.

Such slavery exists because of lust and pornography.

Furthermore, because of cause and effect, the use of porn and lustful sexual fantasy has very powerful negative effects in our lives, but our lust doesn't want us to see it.

The roots of pornography are in the slavery and abuse of others. This remains the basis of modern pornography: it seeks to profit from addiction to lust, without the slightest concern for the impact it has on the addicts it enslaves or the men and women portrayed by the pornographers (who themselves are enslaved by their lust and greed, and treated as property by their "employers"). The pornography industry wants to be seen as acceptable, respectable, and even beneficial, but there is no evidence to support such a view. In fact, pornography only causes terrible suffering in every direction.

Suffering is caused by desire, as explained by the Buddha in the Four Noble Truths, by Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita, and by the scriptures of every religion. Since pornography only increases desire, it can only increase suffering. It is impossible for porn to decrease suffering. 

“Desire never rests by enjoyment of lusts, as fire surely increases the more butter is offered to it.” —Manusmriti 2.94 

"...when lust hath taken hold, it bringeth forth sin [fornication]: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." - James 1:15

"Triple is the gate of this hell, destructive of the self: lust, anger and greed; therefore one should abandon these three." - Bhagavad-gita 16:21

Knowing that even the word pornography implies slavery, ask yourself: are you a slave of pornography? Can you live without pornography? Spiritual development is equivalent to not being a slave to anything, thus if you want to be liberated, free of suffering, you must also be free of slavery to porn. Addiction is slavery, self-imposed. Fortunately, it can be conquered, but you have to work hard to conquer it.

Furthermore, can you really accept the suffering that porn causes for others? The porn industry is directly related to the growing industry of sex slaves worldwide, including the slavery and sexual abuse of children. By engaging in the use of porn you are supporting that industry, and thereby support the enslavement and degeneration of others. If you truly want to live a spiritual life and benefit other beings, your every action must reflect that goal.

Pornography in Religion

Every genuine spiritual tradition condemns pornography, laciviousness, etc.

"...it is prohibited for a man to look at the beauty of a woman to prevent him from acquiring bad thoughts and being torn into another thing, meaning that a drop of semen will be torn from him in vain. So did Rabbi Shimon behave when he came to the city. The friends followed him, and when he saw beautiful women, he lowered his eyes and told the friends not to look. Whoever looks at the beauty of women during the day will have those thoughts coming to him at night. When those evil thoughts come upon him at night, he transgresses, because "nor make to yourselves molten Elohim." For the Klipot [empty shells] that nurture from this are called 'molten Elohim'. Furthermore, if he is mating with his wife when he has these evil thoughts, the children born are called 'molten Elohim' (Leviticus 19:4). Therefore, it is written: "Turn not to idols, nor make to yourselves molten Elohim." Rabbi Aba said: It is prohibited for a person to look at idols and women of the nations, to derive any benefit from them, or to seek a cure from them, as it is forbidden to look at a forbidden place." —Zohar

"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." —Jesus, Matthew 5

"The fly runs towards the fire or lamp thinking that it is a flower and gets burnt up. Even so, the passionate man runs towards a false beautiful form thinking that he can get there the real happiness and gets himself burnt up in the fire of lust." —Sivananda: Sex, Beauty, and Imagination

"...if you fail to kill your lust, then... you will fall into the demonic way." —Buddha, Surangama Sutra

"Lustful people do not enter the path of liberation." - Padmasambhava, from oral instructions to Lady Tsogyal 

Can Porn Be Spiritual?

Since genuine spiritual development is the process of growing the qualities of the consciousness such as love, sacrifice for others, humility, kindness, compassion, this means that genuine spirituality is totally incompatible with lust. One cannot grow spiritually if one is involved with the slavery and prostitution of others, nor with addiction to lust. Therefore, those who sincerely want upright spiritual development must abandon pornography 100%.

Note: lust is not a physical problem, it is psychological. The cause of lust is in the mind, not the body.

"Pornographic, erotic novels and movies engender prostitution, seduction and abduction with force and violence, etc., etc. The pornographic movie actors and writers are teaching perversities onto the subconsciousness of children and adults." —Samael Aun Weor, Sexology, the Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology

"The time has arrived to learn how we must forever stop desecrating sex. It is horrifying to see how we look at sex, namely, pornographic magazines, lust, etc., as if sex were, indeed, something filthy. True human beings never desecrate sex. True human beings know that sex is sacred. Human beings know that wonderful force put the universe into existence. They know that the day the sexual energy ceases to flow in nature the plants and animals would cease to reproduce, all that exists would disappear, the Earth would become a desert. So, why should we see perversity in sex? Why do we spit on the holy shrine of love? Why do we look lustfully at what is sacred, that is, the chemical or metaphysical copulation?" —Samael Aun Weor, Love and Sex 

"...spectators contemplate actors performing pornographic scenes... Then, in the mental plane, the psychological “I” of every person intervenes by creating mental living effigies [succubi, incubi] that become absolute replicas of the stage images, which captivated the retina and the ear of the spectator. These effigies are endowed with consciousness and become true “mental demons” which (during the hours of normal sleep) fornicate repeatedly with the spectator’s mind. Obviously, this causes nocturnal pollutions (wet dreams)... Moreover, there are women who unknowingly accumulate great amounts of Luciferic force. Often these women are not necessarily that beautiful; yet they fall under the service of the Luciferic force. This is why naive male disciples become irresistibly tempted by them; the disciples fight against the temptation, yet the weak end up falling into these women’s atmospheres and fail on their path by fatally submitting themselves to these temptations. Indeed, these women with their Luciferic force hypnotize and attract the weak." —Samael Aun Weor, Logos Mantra Theurgy

"People who squander their sexual energy in morbid sexual conversations, who watch pornographic movies, or who read dishonest novels become impotent. People who miserably spend their time thinking about the sexual act without fulfilling their sexual functions become impotent; indeed, when—aside from any thought— they are going to perform the sexual act, they cannot, and fail. When imagination and thought are poorly used, they can lead us to a psycho-sexual type of impotence. Morbid imagination, the wrong use of imagination, exhausts the sexual energy, and the individual about perform the sexual act fails, becoming impotent. Excessive thinking about sex leads to impotence. The one who lives only analyzing the sexual act without performing it, when he is truly ready to actually perform it, must pass through the tremendous surprise that he cannot: he is impotent. Let our readers not be frightened when arriving at this part of the chapter; it is urgent to study the mysteries of sex, yet to abuse thinking about sex while excluding the sexual act for an indefinite length of time produces psycho-sexual impotence. Sub-imagination and infra-imagination exist. Some people—if they wish—can contemplate a person of the opposite sex with purity, nevertheless their sub-imagination and infra-imagination can betray them in the submerged levels of their mind, and thus lead them to perform the coitus in other states of Consciousness, whose outcome is usually nocturnal pollutions with abundant loss of seminal liquor. At this Patriarchal Headquarters of the Gnostic Movement in Mexico City constantly arrive many letters from people who complain about having erotic dreams accompanied by nocturnal pollutions. We always answer by advising to those people the Maithuna, Sexual Magic, A.Z.F. (sexual union without ejaculation of the semen) as the unique remedy against nocturnal pollutions. It is clear that by means of daily Maithuna the human being becomes accustomed to refrain in the sexual act in order not to spill the semen. The outcome is that the person becomes so accustomed to this super effort that when in dreams the person performs the sexual act, then already by habit, by instinct, the person refrains in order to avoid the spilling of the seminal liquor, thus sexual pollution does not take place. Sex and imagination are intimately associated. To arrive at absolute Chastity is impossible if we did not transform the imagination into a pure mirror without the smallest spot. It is urgent to transform the mechanical and morbid sub-imagination and the automatic and lustful infra-imagination into the imagination of a newborn child. This type of transformation is only possible with the special aid of the Divine Mother Kundalini, the igneous serpent of our magical powers. It is necessary to know how to pray, to know how to beg the divine serpent, asking for the miracle of transforming our subjective and mechanical imagination into the imagination of a newborn child. Only She, the Divine Mother, the sacred serpent, can transform the morbid sub-imagination and the bestial infra-imagination into the innocent imagination of a newborn child. A small boy can contemplate a beautiful naked woman in a pure and perfect manner, without feeling the slightest lust. Indeed, until we be converted and become as innocent as little children, it is impossible to enter into the kingdom of esotericism." —Samael Aun Weor, Light from Darkness

Sex is sacred treat it so, and you will discover a new way of living. 

"I am sex which is not contrary to religion." - Krishna, Bhagavad Gita 7:11

All of these steps will help, but the only way to definitively conquer lust and addiction to porn is through meditation. Only meditation has the power to expose the roots of suffering hidden deep within our mind.