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"SEX"
BEING
IN LOVE
QUESTION:
It doesn't seem like I'll ever be able
to go
beyond the biological, sexual attraction
that
you say is "lust" and grow into the kind
of
love you are talking about. How does it
happen? Where do I start?
Sex is a subtle subject, delicate,
because centuries of exploita-
tion, corruption, centuries of perverted ideas and conditioning,
are associated with
the word "sex." The very word is loaded, it is
one of the most loaded words in existence. You say "God" and it
seems
empty. You say "sex" and it seems too loaded. A thousand
and one things arise in the mind: fear, perversion, attraction,
a
tremendous desire, and a tremendous anti-desire also. They all
arise together. "Sex"--the very word creates confusion,
chaos. It
is as if somebody has thrown a rock in a silent pool, and millions
of ripples arise just from the word! Humanity
has lived under the
influence of very wrong ideas.
So the first thing to consider is, why do you
ask how to go
beyond your sexual feelings? Why do you want in the first place to
transcend your sexuality? You are using
a beautiful term--"go
beyond"--but out of a hundred possibilities, ninety-nine are that
you mean, "How to repress my
sexual feelings?"
A person who has understood that sex can be transcended is
not even worried about
going beyond it, because transcendence
comes through experience. You cannot manage it. It is not some-
thing that you
have to do. You simply pass through many experi-
ences, and those experiences make you more and more mature.
Have you watched that at a certain age, sex becomes important?
Not that you make it important. It is not something
that you make
happen; it happens. At the age of fourteen, or somewhere near
there, suddenly your energy
is flooded with sex. It happens as if
floodgates have been opened in you. Subtle sources of energy that
were
not open before have become open, and your whole energy
becomes sexual, colored with sex. You think sex, you sing
sex, you
walk sex--everything becomes sexual. Every act is colored. This
happens; you have not done anything
about it. It is natural. And
transcendence is also natural. If sex is lived totally, with no con-
demnation,
with no idea of getting rid of it, then at the age of
forty-two--just as at the age of fourteen the door to sex gets
opened
and the whole energy becomes sexual, at the age of forty-
two or near about--those floodgates start to close again.
And that
too is as natural as sex becoming alive; it starts disappearing.
Sexuality is transcended
not by any effort on your part. If you
make any effort that will be repressive, because it has nothing to
do
with you. It is inbuilt--in your body, in your biology. You are
born as sexual beings; nothing is wrong in it. That is
the only way
to be born. To be human is to be sexual. When you were conceived,
your mother and your father were not
praying, they were not lis-
tening to some priest's sermon. They were not in church, they
were making love. Even to
think that your mother and father
were making love when you were conceived seems to be difficult, I
know, but they were
making love; their sexual energies were
meeting and merging into each other. Then you were conceived;
in that deep sexual
act you were conceived. The first cell was a
sexual cell, and then out of that cell other cells have arisen. But
each
cell remains sexual, basically. Your whole body is sexual,
made of sex cells. Now they are millions.
Remember it: you exist as a sexual being. Once you accept it,
the conflict that has been created down through the centuries
starts
to dissolve. Once you accept it deeply, with no ideas in
between, when sex is thought of as simply natural, then
you
live it. You don't ask how to go beyond eating, you don't ask how
to transcend breathing, because no
religion has taught you to
transcend breathing. That's why; otherwise you would be asking,
"How to go beyond
breathing?" But you don't ask, you simply
breathe! You are a breathing animal. You are a sexual animal,
also.
But there is a difference. Fourteen years of your life, in
the beginning, are almost non-sexual, or at the most there
is just
rudimentary sexual play, which is not really sexual--just prepar-
ing, rehearsing, that's all. By
the age of fourteen, the energy
is ripe.
Watch: a child is born and immediately, within
just a few sec-
onds, the child has to breathe; otherwise he will die. Then breath-
ing remains for the
whole of life, because it has come at the very
first step of life. It cannot be transcended. Maybe before you die,
then,
just a few seconds before, it will stop, but not before that.
Always remember it: both ends of life,
the beginning and end,
are symmetrical. The child is born, he starts breathing within a
matter of seconds.
When the person is old and dying, the moment
he stops breathing, within a matter of seconds he will be dead.
Sex enters at a relatively late stage: For twelve, fourteen years
the child has lived without sex. And if the society
is not too
repressed and hence obsessed with sex, a child can live completely
oblivious to the fact that sex, or anything
like sex, exists. The
child can remain absolutely innocent. That innocence is also not
possible nowadays, because people
are so repressed. When repres-
sion happens, then side by side obsession also happens. On the one
side there are priests,
who go on condemning sex, and then there
are anti-priests, like Hugh Hefner and others, who go on making
sexuality more
and more glamorous. The priest and Hugh Hefner
exist together as two sides of the same coin. When churches disap-
pear,
only then Playboy magazines will disappear, not before. They
are partners in the same business! They look like enemies,
but
don't be deceived by that. They talk against each other, but that's
how things work.
I have
heard about two men who went out of business, they
had gone broke, so they decided on a new and very simple busi-
ness.
They started traveling from one town to another. First one
would enter, and in the night he would throw coal tar on people's
windows
and doors. After two or three days the second man would
come to the same town. He would advertise that he could clean
any
kind of dirt from the outside of people's homes, even coal tar,
and people all over town would hire him. During that time
the
other would be doing his half of the business in another town.
This way, they started earning lots of money.
This is what is happening between the church and the people
who are creating pornography.
I have
heard:
Pretty Miss Keenan sat in the confessional. "Father," she
said, "I want to confess
that I let my boyfriend kiss me."
"Is that all you did?" asked
the priest, very interested.
"Well, no. I let him put his
hand on my leg, too."
"And then what?"
"And then I let him pull down my panties."
"And then, and
then ... ?" questioned the priest, panting
with excitement.
"And then my mother walked into the room."
"Ah, shit," sighed
the priest.
It is together; they are partners
in a conspiracy. Whenever
you are too repressed, you start finding a perverse interest. A per-
verted interest is the
problem, not sex. Now this priest is neu-
rotic. Sex is not the problem, but this man is in trouble.
Sisters Margaret Alice and Francis Catherine were out
walking along a
side street. Suddenly they were grabbed by
two men, dragged into a dark
alley, and raped. "Father,
forgive them," said Sister Margaret Alice,
"for they know not
what they do."
"Shut up!" cried Sister Catherine, "this one does."
This is bound
to be the situation. So never carry a single idea
against sex in your mind, otherwise you will never be able to
go
beyond it into love. The only people who can go beyond "mere bio-
logical sexual attraction" are those
who accept sex very naturally.
It is difficult, I know, because you are born in a society that is neu-
rotic about sex. Either condemning it or glamorizing it, but it is
neurotic all the same. It is very difficult to
get out of this neuro-
sis, but if you are a little alert you can get out of it.
So the
real thing is not how to transcend sex, but how to tran-
scend this perverted ideology of the society--this fear
of sex, this
repression of sex, this obsession with sex.
Sex is beautiful. Sex in itself
is a natural, rhythmic phenome-
non. It happens when the child is ready to be conceived, and it is
good
that it happens; otherwise life would not exist. Life exists
through sex; sex is its medium. If you understand life,
if you love
life, you will know that sex is sacred, holy. Then you live it, then
you delight in it; and
as naturally as it has come, it goes of its own
accord. By the age of forty-two, or somewhere near there, your
interest
in sex as such starts disappearing as naturally as it had
come into being.
But it doesn't happen
that way. Instead, you will be surprised
when I say forty-two. You know people who are seventy, eighty.
and yet they
have not gone beyond their obsession with sex. You
know "dirty old men." They are victims of the society because
they
could not be natural. It is a hangover, because they repressed
their sexuality when they should have enjoyed and
delighted in
it. In those moments of sexual delight they were not totally in it.
They were not orgasmic,
they were half-hearted.
Whenever you are half-hearted in anything, it lingers longer.
If you
are sitting at your table and eating, and if you eat only half-
heartedly then your hunger will remain. Then you will continue
to
think about food the whole day. You can try fasting and you
will see: you will continuously think about food! But if you
have
eaten well, and when I say that, I don't mean only that you have
stuffed your stomach. Then it is not necessarily
the case that you
have eaten well. You might have stuffed yourself, but eating well
is an art. It is not just stuffing
yourself, it is a great art--to taste
the food, to smell the food, to touch it, chew it, to digest the food,
and to
digest it as divine. It is divine; it is a gift.
Hindus say, Anam Brahma, food is divine, a gift from
God. With
deep respect you eat, and while eating you forget everything else,
because eating is prayer. It is existential
prayer. You are eating
God, and God is going to give you nourishment. It is a gift to be
accepted with deep love and
gratitude.
And you don't stuff the body, because stuffing the body is
being antagonistic to the body.
It is the other pole. There are
people who are obsessed with fasting, and there are people who
are obsessed with stuffing
themselves. Both are wrong, because in
both ways the body loses balance. A real lover of the body eats
only to the point
where the body feels perfectly quiet, balanced,
tranquil; where the body feels to be neither leaning to the left nor
to
the right, but just in the middle. It is an art to understand the
language of the body, to understand the language of your
stom-
ach, to understand what is needed and to give only that which is
needed, and to give that in an artistic way,
in an aesthetic way.
Animals eat, man eats--what is the difference? Man makes a
great, aesthetic
experience out of eating. What is the point of hav-
ing a beautiful dining table? What is the point of having candles
burning
there? What is the point of asking friends to come and
participate? It is to make it an art, not just stuffing yourself.
But
these are outward signs of the art; the inward signs are to under-
stand the language of your body and to listen
to it, to be sensitive
to its needs. Then you eat, and the whole day you will not think of
food at all. Only when the
body is hungry again will the remem-
brance come. Then it is natural.
With sex the same happens.
If you have no "anti" attitude
about it, then you take it as a natural, divine gift. With great grat-
itude you enjoy
it; with prayerfulness you enjoy it.
Tantra says that before you make love to a woman or to a man,
you
should first pray because it is going to be a divine meeting of
energies. A fragrance of godliness will surround you. Wherever
two
lovers are, there is godliness. Wherever two lovers' energies
are meeting and mingling, there is life, alive, at its best--a
divine
energy surrounds you. Churches are empty, but love chambers are
full of godliness. If you have tasted love the
way Tantra says to
taste it, if you have known love the way Tao says to know it, then
by the time you reach forty-two,
sex starts disappearing of its own
accord. And you say good-bye to it with deep gratitude, because
you are fulfilled.
It has been delightful, it has been a blessing; you
say good-bye to it.
And forty-two is the age
for meditation, the right age. Sex dis-
appears and that overflowing energy is no longer there. One
becomes more tranquil.
Passion has gone and now compassion
arises. Now there is no more fever; one is not so interested in the
"other." With
sex disappearing, the other is no longer a focus. One
starts returning to one's own source; the return journey starts.
Sex is transcended not by your effort. It happens if you have
lived it totally. So my suggestion is, drop all condemnation,
all anti-
life attitudes and accept the facts: sex is, so who are you to deny it?
And who is trying to deny it, to go
beyond it? It is just the ego.
Remember, sex creates the greatest problem for the ego. There
are
two types of people: very egoistic people are always against
sex; humble people are never against it. But who listens
to humble
people? In fact, humble people don't go around preaching, only
egoists.
Why is there a conflict between sex and ego? Because sex is
something in your life where you cannot be egoistic,
where the
other becomes more important than you. Your woman, your man,
becomes more important than you. In every other
case, you remain
the most important. In a love relationship the other becomes very,
very important, tremendously important.
You become a satellite
and the other becomes the nucleus; and the same is happening for
the other: you become the nucleus
and he or she becomes a satel-
lite. It is a reciprocal surrender. Both are surrendering to the god
of love, and both
become humble.
Sex is the only energy that gives you hints that there is some-
thing that you cannot
control. Money you can control, politics
you can control, the market you can control, knowledge you can
control, science,
morality, all these things you can control. Some-
where, sex brings in a totally different world; you cannot control
it.
And the ego is a great controller. It is happy if it can control; it
is unhappy if it cannot control. So there is a conflict
between the
ego and sex.
Remember, it is a losing battle. The ego cannot win it because
ego is
just superficial. Sex is very deep-rooted. Sex is your life; ego
is just your mind, your head. Sex has roots all over you;
ego has
roots only in your ideas--very superficial, just in the head.
So who is trying to go beyond
biological, sexual attraction?
The head is trying to control sex. If you are too much in the head
then you want to go
beyond your sexual feelings because sex
brings you down to the guts. It does not allow you to remain hang-
ing in the
head. Everything else you can manage from there; sex
you cannot manage from there. You cannot make love with your
head. You have to come down, you have to descend from your
heights, you have to come closer to earth.
Sex is humiliating to the ego, so egoistic people are always
against sex. They go on finding ways and means to transcend
it.
They can never transcend it. They can, at the most, become per-
verted. Their whole effort from the
very beginning is doomed to
failure.
I have heard:
A boss was interviewing applicants to replace his
private secretary who was resigning
because of expectant
motherhood. The boss's right-hand man sat with him as he
looked the applicants over. The first girl was a beautiful,
buxom blond. She turned
out to be intelligent, and had
excellent secretarial skills. The second was a dark-haired
beauty who was even more intelligent and proficient than the
first. The third one
was cross-eyed, had buck teeth, weighed
one hundred and ninety pounds, and had almost
no skills.
After interviewing all three candidates, the boss informed his
associate that he was hiring the third applicant.
"But why?"
asked the astonished employee.
"Well," boomed the boss, "in
the first place, she looks very
intelligent to me! In the second place, it is none
of your damned
business, and in the third place, she is my wife's sister."
So you may pretend that you
have won over sex, but an under-
current remains. You may rationalize, you may find reasons, you
may pretend, you may
create a hard shell around you, but deep
down the real reason, the reality, will stand untouched: "She is
my wife's
sister"--that is the real reason. "She looks intelli-
gent"--that is just a rationalization. "And it is none of your
damned
business"--that is being annoyed and irritated because
you are afraid that the other may find out the real case! But the
real
case will explode no matter what you do; you cannot hide it,
it is not possible.
So you can try to
control sex, but an undercurrent of sexuality
will run through your being, and it will show itself in many ways.
Out
of all your rationalizations, it will again and again raise its
head.
I will not suggest that you
make any effort to go beyond your
sexuality. What I suggest is just the contrary: forget about going
beyond it. Move
into it as deeply as you can. While the energy is
there, move as deeply as you can, love as deeply as you can, and
make
an art of it. It is not just to be "done."
That is the whole meaning of Tantra, making an art of love-
making.
There are subtle nuances, which only people who enter
with a great aesthetic sense will be able to know. Otherwise, you
can
make love for your whole life and still remain unsatisfied
because you don't know that real satisfaction is something very
aesthetic.
It is like a subtle music arising in your soul. If through
sex you fall into harmony, if through love you become non-tense
and
relaxed, if love is not just throwing out energy because you
don't know what else to do with it, if it is not just a relief
but a
relaxation, if you relax into your partner and your partner
relaxes into you, if for a few seconds, for a few
moments or a few
hours you forget who you are and you are completely lost in obliv-
ion, you will come out of it purer,
more innocent, more virgin.
And you will have a different type of being: at ease, centered,
rooted.
If this happens, one day suddenly you will see that the flood
has gone and it has left you very, very rich. You will not
be sorry
that it has gone. You will be thankful, because now richer worlds
open. When sex leaves you, the doors of meditation
open. When
sex leaves you, then you are not trying to lose yourself in the
other. You become capable of losing
yourself in yourself. Now
another world of orgasm, inner orgasm, of being with oneself,
arises.
But that arises only through being with the other. One grows,
matures through the other. Then a moment comes when
you can
be alone, tremendously happy. There is no need for any other. The
need has disappeared but you have
learned much through it, you
have learned much about yourself. The other became the mirror.
And you have
not broken the mirror! You have learned so much
about yourself, now there is no need to look into the mirror. You
can
close your eyes and you can see your face there. But you would
not be able to see that face if there had been no
mirror from the
very beginning.
Let your woman be your mirror; let your man be your mirror.
Look
into your partner's eyes and see your face; move into your
partner to know yourself. Then one day the mirror will not be
needed.
But you will not be against the mirror! You will be so
grateful to it, how can you be against it? You will be so thankful,
how
can you be against it? Then, transcendence happens.
Transcendence is not repression. Transcendence is
a natural
growth of your being; you grow above, you go beyond, just as a
seed breaks and a sprout starts rising above
the ground. When sex
disappears, the seed disappears.
In sex, you were able to give birth to somebody
else, a child.
When sex disappears, the whole energy starts giving birth to
yourself. This is what Hindus have called
dwija, the twice-born.
One birth has been given to you by your parents, the other birth is
waiting. It has to be given
to you by yourself. You have to father
and mother yourself. Then your whole energy is turning in--it
becomes an inner
circle.
Right now it will be difficult for you to make an inner circle.
It will be easier to connect
it with another pole--a woman or a
man--and then the circle becomes complete. Then you can enjoy
the blessings of the
circle. But by and by you will be able to make
the inner circle, because inside you also you are man and woman,
woman
and man. Nobody is just man and nobody is just woman,
because you come from the communion of a man and a woman. Both
have
participated; your mother has given something to you and
you father has given something to you. Fifty-fifty, they have
con-
tributed to you. Both are there. There is a possibility that both can
meet inside you. Again your father and mother
can love inside
you. Then your reality will be born. Once they met when your body
was born; now, if they can meet inside
you, your soul will be born.
That's what transcendence of sex is; it is a higher sex.
Let me tell you this: when you transcend sex, you reach to a
higher sex. Ordinary sex is gross, higher sex is not gross
at all.
Ordinary sex is outward-moving, higher sex is inward-moving. In
ordinary sex, two bodies meet, and the meeting
happens on the
outside. In higher sex, your own inner energies meet. It is not
physical, it is spiritual, it is Tantra.
Tantra is transcendence. If
you don't understand this and you go on fighting with sex ...
The question
has been asked by a woman whom I know is pass-
ing through some critical moments in her mind. She would like to
be
independent, but it is too early. She would like not to be both-
ered by anybody else but it is too early, and it
is too egoistic. Right
now transcendence is not possible, only repression is possible.
And if you repress
now, in your old age you will repent because
then things become messed up.
Each thing
has its own right time. Each thing has to be done in
its moment. While young, don't be afraid of love, and don't
be
afraid of sex. If you are afraid while you are young, in old age you
will become obsessed; and then it
will be difficult to move deeply
into love, and the mind will remain obsessed.
It is
my understanding that people, if they have lived rightly,
lovingly, naturally, then by the forty-second year they
start going
beyond sex. If they have not lived naturally and they have been
fighting with sex, then forty-two
becomes their most dangerous
time--because by the time they are forty-two their energies are
declining.
When you are young you can repress something
because you are energetic. Look at the irony of it! A young person
can
repress his or her sexuality very easily because young people
have the energy to repress it. They can just put it
down and sit on
it. When the energies are declining, then that repressed sexuality
will assert itself and you
will not be able to control it.
I have heard an anecdote:
A sixty-five-year-old man visited the office of his son, who
was a doctor, and asked
for something that would increase his
sexual potential. The son gave his father a
shot, and then
refused to accept a fee. Nevertheless, the old man insisted on
giving him ten dollars. A week later the old man was back for
another injection, and
this time handed his son twenty
dollars.
"But Pop, the shots are only ten dollars."
"Take it!" said
Stein. "The extra ten is from Momma."
That will continue. So before
that happens to you, please be
finished with it. Don't wait for old age, because then things go
ugly. Then everything
goes out of season.
Thank you for your visit
John
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