Extramarital Relationships

 

And he says he is also against extra-marital relationships. That is a little more complicated, but it has to be understood. That too is one of the latest psychological findings, that extra-marital relationships help marriage, they don't destroy it. It is always good to have a little change, just at the weekend. It does not harm at all. That idea -- that if a man starts having a little love affair with some woman other than his wife it will destroy the marriage -- is absolutely wrong. It will help, it will renew the relationship, because one gets tired. Man is, after all, human. Don't ask impossible things! One gets tired -- the same woman, the same man. One loses all taste.

 

If you have to eat the same food every day, like I do, you will get fed up. Even my kitchen people who prepare the food, they are utterly fed up with it. Except me, everybody is fed up. My gardeners are fed up because they have to grow the SAME vegetables. Vivek, Astha, Nirgun, Pragya -- they are ALL fed up -- they have to prepare exactly the same every morning, every evening. There is no difference between my lunch and supper. And there is no dinner ever. Dinners don't exist in my life at all -- just supper and lunch, the same, exactly the same. And I can understand they get fed up preparing, preparing the same thing every day.

 

Unless you are enlightened you are bound to get fed up. I, of course, enjoy it every time -- because I go on forgetting about the morning, so I am again tremendously excited. When Vivek brings the food I immediately look: "What have you prepared?" And she looks very embarrassed. And I don't miss a single moment, I start eating. Because who cares what I had eaten yesterday and the day before yesterday? I don't carry all these psychological memories, so each time it is new.

 

Unless you are enlightened, extra-marital relationships ARE good. So please have as many as you can have before you become enlightened, because once you are enlightened I cannot help! Then you are finished.

 

Once in a while just a little taste of a new woman, a new man revives your interest in the old woman and the old man. You start thinking, "After all, she is not so bad." A little change is always good.

 

I am not against extra-marital relationships. The people who are against them are really teaching you possessiveness in an indirect way. When I say I am not against extra-marital relationships I am teaching you non-possessiveness. Just see the point: if I talk about non-possessiveness people think, "That's spiritual, that's religious -- that's great!" But if I talk about extramarital relationships, the spiritual and the religious are immediately offended.

 

But I am saying the SAME thing. Talking about nonpossessiveness is abstract, talking about extra-marital relationship is concrete. And you cannot live with abstractions, you have to live with concrete life. And what wrong can it do? If a man is tired of the same woman -- the same contours, the same geography, the same topography -- once in a while a little bit different geography, a little bit different landscape... and he comes home again interested in exploring the old map. It gives a break -- a coffee break. And after each coffee break you can again get involved in the same work, the same files, and you open them and you start working.... The coffee break helps you.

 

I don't want people to be interested in impossible ideals. I am not an idealist at all. I am down-to-earth, a pragmatist, a realist.

 

If people want to live together in a deep intimacy, they should not be possessive. They should allow freedom. And that's what extra-marital relationship is -- freedom. But people are very strange.

 

Just a few days ago, Divya said she wants to give Hamid absolute freedom, she wants to work it out, she does not want to be possessive. Just to see whether she really meant it I inquired, "Then let Hamid be removed to another room." She said, "No!" What kind of absolute freedom is this if Hamid cannot be allowed to go to another room, to live separately -- what KIND of freedom is this? And she was calling it absolute freedom! And Hamid WANTS to go! Even in front of Divya he goes on saying, "I want to live separately." And she says, "You keep quiet, you don't understand." And of course he keeps quiet because he is an Iranian and he can't understand much. Who has ever heard about Iranians understanding? So he keeps quiet. But how long can he keep quiet? Again and again he says, "But I want to live separately." And Divya says, "Don't get emotional. Keep cool and let me try to give you total freedom."

 

Now this total freedom, absolute freedom, what does it mean?

 

Nobody wants to give freedom to anybody else. People say beautiful words, sweet nothings. This sounds so good: total freedom, unconditional love, non-possessive intimacy. lust the sound is good, just like AUM.... It sounds good, but what else can you do with it?

 

Extra-marital relationships are very significant, immensely helpful to psychological growth and maturity, because when you start moving with another woman or man for a day or two, or a few days, a distance is created between you and your old lover. And that distance is very helpful. When you are exactly at the same distance as you were before you fell in love with each other, again a honeymoon is possible. That space will allow a new honeymoon. Again you will become interested, again you will start reconsidering, rethinking the whole matter.

 

And being with the new man and the new woman you will see that after all they are not so different. So what is the point of destroying a certain intimacy that has developed? What is the point of destroying it? And intimacy is far more fulfilling than any sexual relationship can ever be.

 

If two persons are really intimate they will allow absolute freedom, because they know that intimacy is far MORE beautiful, far MORE significant -- they have experienced it. So any sexual relationship is just a little diversion, nothing can go wrong just because of it.

 

But the old idea of marriage is of possessiveness, and the whole church has depended upon possessiveness in everything -- possess! They talk about non-possession, but that too is out of greed: greed for the other world. If they talk about renouncing the world, it is to gain the pleasures of paradise. It is greed, pure greed, simple greed, and nothing else.

 

And he is against contraception. He is bound to be because ALL religions are against contraceptive methods -- for the simple reason that their numbers will be reduced. It is a political game: who has got more numbers -- Catholics or Protestants, Hindus or Jainas or Mohammedans? Hindus are against contraceptives for the simple reason that Mohammedans will go on increasing, and sooner or later again India will have to be divided into two parts. The Mohammedans will make demands if they start growing in numbers, and they can grow more in numbers because Mohammedans are allowed by their religion to marry four women. Now that is also a strategy. If you have four women.... One man is capable of making four or forty women pregnant. But vice versa is not true: if four men are married to one woman, only one child will come out of it. But if four women are married to one man, then four children will come out of it.

 

Mohammed himself married nine women. So, of course, when the prophet himself married nine, the followers should be allowed at least four. That seems logical, rational. So Mohammedans are allowed four women. And if you stop it you are interfering with their religion, and nobody should interfere with anybody's religion.

 

Now I am interfering with their religion. Soon there will be protests that I am interfering with their religion, and I am talking against Mohammed, that I am talking against their religion and the idea of marrying four women. That is allowed by their religion, nobody can stop it.

 

Hindus are afraid that if this goes on, naturally they will grow in number, and if Hindus are forced to use contraceptive methods they will be reduced in number. The whole politics is of numbers, particularly because of democracy. Each single person brings a vote: the more children you have the more votes you have. And whosoever has more votes will rule the country, will rule the world. So all religious heads, all religious institutions, all religious propagandists are against contraception.

 

But, in fact, contraception is one of the greatest blessings that has happened to humanity in the whole of human history. It is the greatest revolution. No revolution is so great compared to the invention of contraceptives, because it is through contraceptives that women can become equal to men. It is only through contraceptives that the woman can have all the rights that man has always claimed for himself. Otherwise she was almost always pregnant.

 

She cannot work in the factory, she cannot work in the office, she cannot be a doctor, she cannot be a professor. At the most she can only be a housewife, and that simply means a house-servant. And her whole life is wasted in giving birth to children. She cannot do anything else -- she cannot paint, she cannot compose poetry, she cannot play music, she cannot dance. How can you dance if you are continuously pregnant? It is so sickening, so nauseating.

 

But her whole work in the past was just like that of a factory -- to go on giving birth to children. It started nearabout the age of fourteen and it continued as long as the man was potent enough to go on procreating.

 

Two dozen children was not an exception, one dozen was a very normal thing. Now a woman giving one dozen children to the world or two dozen children to the world will not have time for anything else.

 

That was the root cause of woman's slavery. And when she was continuously pregnant and ill and sick because of pregnancy, she had to depend on man -- economically depend on man. And if you depend on man economically you cannot be free. Economics is one of the most fundamental factors. If the money comes from the man, then the money comes with conditions.

 

If we need a humanity where man and woman are equal, then contraceptives should be used as widely as possible; they should become normal. And only then will extra-marital relationships, pre-marital relationships become very simple. The whole problem was that if you were moving in a pre-marital relationship and the woman got pregnant, there would be great trouble. The contraceptive has eradicated that trouble completely.

 

The Pope is afraid that if contraceptives are used then pre-marital relationships cannot be prevented. That was a tragedy to prevent them: the woman was so afraid that she would lose all honor, all respect if she got pregnant; the man was so afraid that if he made a woman pregnant then he would have to get married to the woman. He may not be ready for that; it may have been just a momentary affair. It may have been just fun! But it has become now a great responsibility, a whole life's responsibility.

 

Contraceptives have transformed the very quality of sex: sex becomes fun. Sex is no more such a serious thing as it used to be. It becomes just a playfulness -- two bodies playing with each other, that's all. There is nothing wrong in it. You play football -- what is wrong in that? You play volleyball -- what is wrong in that? Two body energies are involved.

 

Sex is also a game, but it was not a game before. Before contraceptives it was a serious thing. Contraceptives have eradicated that whole seriousness about it. Now the religions are bound to be afraid, because their whole edifice can collapse because of contraceptives. What the atheists could not do in centuries, contraceptives can do within decades. They have already done it: contraceptives have made man free of the priest.

 

Contraceptives are a blessing, but the Pope cannot be in favor of them because his power is at stake -- and not only the Pope but all other religious heads, the shankaracharyas and the ayatollahs and the imams, they will all be against contraceptives. Their whole business is at risk.

 

And I am all for contraceptives. They should be widely used. Children should be taught by parents, by the schools, how to use contraceptives so sex becomes just fun, it loses all seriousness. And then only can woman be liberated. Without contraceptives the woman is bound to remain a slave, half humanity living in slavery is not a good scene to look at.

 

-Osho, "Philosophia Ultima, #3, Q1"