Question 3
I certainly have not transcended sex. why then, each time i go into it, does it somehow not feel right?

 

 

It does not feel right because you have not yet gone into it ever, or you have gone only so far but not far enough. You have gone into it only with a conditioned mind. You have not been able to dissolve into it even for a single moment. You have gone into it with all the guilt that the priests have produced in you. You have gone into it not with an innocence; you have not gone into it as virgin.

 

Now you will be surprised by my use of the word ‘virgin’. A virgin is one who can go into sex innocently. It has nothing to do with physiological virginity; it is something immensely, deeply psychological, almost touching the boundary of the spiritual. Virginity means a person who can go into sex without any ideas that others have imposed upon him.

 

In that sense, it is very rare to find a virgin person, because the society contaminates everybody. You have been given ideas against sex — that sex is a sin, that sex is ugly, that sex is animal, that sex is undivine, that sex is the barrier between you and God. With all these ideas you have gone into it, Sona, how can you go with so many things holding you back? A long chain of priests holding you back — how can you go into it? You have gone only partially.

 

But even when you have been in it, your priests have been clamouring inside you, shouting against you, condemning you. That’s what conscience is all about. Your so-called conscience is nothing but the voice of the priest that has been implanted in you. It is one of the greatest harms that has been done to humanity down the ages.

 

Now scientists have discovered a far more efficient method for doing it: they put electrodes in the brain. And if an electrode is put in your head you will never know about it, because inside the head you don’t have any sensitivity. You will be surprised — it has happened many times: in wartime a person gets a bullet in the head and forgets all about it, and after years, accidentally, the bullet is found inside the brain. And he has not been aware of it.

 

Inside the brain there is no sensitivity. So if a stone is put inside your head you will not be able to know about it. Electrodes can be put in your head.

 

One of the most famous psychologists of this age, Delgado, has experimented with animals. An electrode is put into the head of a bull; now he can be controlled from the outside. A small box having a few knobs on it and buttons on it, and the bull can be ordered. For example, the bull can be made angry just by pushing a button. He receives the wireless message in his head, and immediately he becomes ferocious, for no reason at all. Nobody has provoked him from the outside; nobody has given him a signal or a red flag — he has not seen a sannyasin. There is no provocation from the outside. But Delgado just pushes a button, it touches some center in his head — a center which functions to create ferociousness, anger, rage — and rage is released. The bull rushes towards Delgado, mad to kill him.

 

 

When for the first time the experiment was done, fifty thousand people had come to see it. Their breathing stopped; they had never seen any bull so ferocious. And the experiment was done in Spain — they know about bulls and bullfights. They had never seen such a ferocious phenomenon; it was certain that Delgado was going to be killed. And he had no protection, not at all — only that small box.

 

And the bull came closer and closer and closer, and just when he was two feet away and people were watching — “Now it is finished” — he pushed another button, and an immediate stop. The bull stopped THEN and THERE, almost as if he had become frozen.

 

Now Delgado says the same can be done with man. He has put these electrodes in the brains of rats and given them also a box so they can push the buttons. The electrode is connected to the sex center. You will be surprised — the rats go crazy. They simply go on pushing the button, sixty times a minute! Each second they are having orgasms, their whole bodies shivering with joy, thrilled. They forget about food, they forget about everything. Day and night, they don’t sleep. They just go on pushing, till exhausted they fall in a coma. Now the woman is not needed; nobody else is needed.

 

In fact, that is what happens when you make love. The woman triggers your sex center in the brain, the man triggers the woman’s sex center in the brain. Delgado says that now these are old, out-of-date methods. You can have a small box, just the size of a matchbox, in your pocket; you can just push the button and immediately there is a great orgasm, a total orgasm.

 

This is one of the most dangerous discoveries that Delgado has made — because it is going to be used by politicians, it is going to be used by dictators. It is possible that it may have already been used in countries like Russia, China. Each child can be fixed with an electrode; nobody will know. In the hospital, just when the child is being given birth to, he can be… just a small operation, a very small operation, and a small electronic thing just the size of a button can be forced into the head. And it can be connected with the center that makes you obey. That’s enough. Then Morarji Desai can push a button in Delhi and the whole country says, “Morarji Desai, JINDABAD. Long live Morarji Desai!” You just order, “Right turn!” and the whole country turns right; “Go and kill the enemy!” and people start killing.

 

Delgado has released a more dangerous phenomenon than atomic energy. People have not yet understood all the implications of it. It will change the whole future of man — man can disappear because of it, because man can lose all freedom. Man can become just a machine.

 

But this is exactly what the priests have been doing, down the ages. Their methods were not so sophisticated, but still they have been doing it. They create conscience in you — that is parallel to an electronic device. They create conscience in you; from the very childhood they start saying and repeating a certain thing: sex is sin. In the school, in the church, in the home — everywhere they go on talking against sex. They are creating a mechanism in you. Repeated thousands of times, in thousands of ways, you become hypnotized by the idea. It becomes a part of your inner being. It is nothing different from Delgado.

 

Delgado has only done things in a more scientific way, precise, sophisticated — but the priests were the real discoverers. For five thousand years they have been doing this to humanity. And once the idea settles in your mind, then the priest is inside you.

 

You may be making love, Sona, but you are not alone. The priest is pulling your strings from behind; he is saying, “This is sin. You will suffer in hell.” You are making love and in your mind you are seeing hellfire. How can you go into it?

 

You say: I CERTAINLY HAVE NOT TRANSCENDED SEX…

 

Neither can you go into it nor can you transcend it — because transcendence requires first going into it. Only those who go totally into it can attain to transcendence. Knowledge, experience, helps you to transcend. Experience liberates.

 

Now the trick is that the priest does not allow you to experience it — its beauty, its liberation, its joy, he does not allow you to experience it. And the mind goes on thinking about it again and again. And whenever you go into it you are in a dilemma: you cannot go totally into it, so you go on missing the experience.

 

When you are not in it the mind fantasizes about it — because the mind needs the experience. It is a natural desire, a natural longing; the mind wants to be fulfilled. And when you go into it the priest pulls you back. So you become pornographic — in your mind you think of sex, in your dreams sex filters in, in your behaviour… everywhere it is so obvious. Negative or positive, but you are full of sex. But whenever you go into it the priest pulls you back. Whenever you go into it, Delgado is there — he pushes the button and you stop. Just two feet away, the bull stops.

 

You come out of it frustrated. And because of frustration you desire more. This is a dilemma that the priest has created in humanity. The priest has been the greatest enemy of humanity.

 

You will never transcend sex. You may become perverted, but you cannot transcend sex. Transcendence is only when you have gone into it totally and seen into it and seen the momentariness of it — and seen that it is not really sex that was your longing but something else. Sex was just an excuse to experience something else. When you have experienced sex totally, you will become aware of THAT something else.

 

What is that? In the total orgasmic joy of sex, time disappears, ego disappears — these two things disappear. That is the greatest longing in you. Once you have known that in deep sex two things disappear — ego and time…. You are not aware of time, you move into eternity; and you are not aware of separation, the ego is not functioning at all — that is the joy. Once understood that this is the root cause of joy, you are free of sex. Because now the whole thing is that you can drop ego and time without going into sex. And sex can make it happen only for a moment, then darkness settles again. That light comes only for a moment.

 

But through meditation, that light becomes a reality in you. You start living out of time and you start living out of ego. What you attain in a sex orgasm for a single moment, Buddha lives in it twenty-four hours a day. That’s why he does not need sex. That is transcendence.

 

Sona, transcendence is possible only when you have known the whole secret of sex. The secret is it is a biological, natural device to make you aware of meditation. It is through sexual orgasm that meditation was discovered. The first person who discovered meditation is bound to have discovered it through sex; there is no other way — because sex is a natural phenomenon. Meditation is a discovery, it is not a natural phenomenon. It is going beyond nature, it is a transcendence.

 

You say: I CERTAINLY HAVE NOT TRANSCENDED SEX. WHY THEN, EACH TIME I GO INTO IT, DOES IT SOMEHOW NOT FEEL RIGHT?

 

THEY ARE BOTH INTERDEPENDENT You have not transcended sex and you will not transcend — till you start feeling that it is absolutely right. The idea that it is not right is Delgado’s. The idea that it is not right is of the society, of the religion you are accidentally born into. It is given by others to you, and it was given to those others by others.

 

It has made you split. And you go on doing something for which your total heart cannot say yes. And you cannot resist either, because your total heart cannot say no either. You are pulled apart in different directions; you start falling into pieces.

 

And remember, the phenomenon is very complicated. Whenever something is repressed it becomes more and more attractive. Less and less will you be able to experience it, but more and more attractive it becomes. And you will find vicarious ways, cunning ways — or you may simply turn your whole life upside-down.

 

Rajen has sent me a beautiful limerick:

 

There was an old man from Darjeeling

 

Who was travelling from Hyde Park to Ealing.

 

A sign on the door

 

Said “Don’t spit on the floor,”

 

So he carefully spat on the ceiling.

 

What else can you do? The anti-idea will make you stand on your head. If you are not allowed to stand on your feet, what else can you do? SIRSHASANA — you have to stand on your head — the headstand. That seems to be the logical consequence of repression.

 

Repression cannot help you towards transcendence. Only expression can take you to transcendence.

 

Sona, let the priest disappear. The priest has to be dropped, all guilt feelings have to be dropped. And I know it is difficult to drop, because that’s your whole mind, and the whole society is in support of it. The whole society believes in it. You will feel very alone in dropping it, you will feel very fearful in dropping it — because in dropping it, you will no more be a part of the crowd. You will no more be a sheep, you will become an individual. And it is frightening to be alone.

 

Hence people go on following the herd. The herd goes on repeating old stupidities, superstitions, meaningless nonsense. Positively harmful things it goes on repeating, but we go on believing in it — because if we don’t believe, we are left alone. And people are very much afraid of being left alone.

 

That is the courage a sannyasin needs. Sona, be courageous enough to be alone. And experiment with your life and your life energy without any hindrance from any source. God has given you this energy: use it to go deep into experiences.

 

Sex is one of the most profound experiences. And the greatest thing about it is that if you go into it you transcend it. Out of sex, BRAHMACHARYA IS born, true celibacy is born — but only out of sex, only out of true, authentic sex.

 

Now, this is a problem. I teach you to go deep in love and sex, only because that is the only way to go beyond. My effort is to help you to go beyond — because without going beyond, you will remain tethered to the earth, you will not be able to fly into the sky. Without going beyond, you will remain in the prison of biology. Without going beyond, you will remain part of the animal kingdom. You will not really become human — what to say about being divine?

 

Going beyond sex, you go beyond the animals. Going beyond sex, you shatter the biological prison cell around you. Going beyond sex, you go beyond the earth. For the first time you start looking at the sky and the stars, and the faraway lights start showering on you. And faraway, distant music is heard. You are moving towards your real destiny, towards your real fulfillment.

 

Animal, human, divine: these are the three layers in you. The animal layer consists of sex, the human layer consists of love, the divine layer consists of prayer. It is the same energy, being expressed in higher and higher forms: the mud, the lotus, the fragrance.

 

Please don’t go on spitting on the ceiling. Spit on the floor! Be natural. And remember the paradox: being totally natural is the way of going beyond nature — entering into super-nature.

 

Your mind is perverted by the priests. You have to be very alert about it. The conditioning is very long, centuries and centuries old. And we have been taught to respect whatsoever is old — the older it is, the more we are taught to respect it; the more ancient it is, the more respectability and credit it has.

 

And why did the priest go against sex in the first place? The Buddhas were never against it. They were ALL for transcendence, as I am for transcendence. The Buddhas were for transcendence — but listen: when I say you have to go beyond sex, it can be interpreted as if I am against sex, because I am saying you have to go beyond sex. You can interpret that I am against sex — otherwise why should I say you have to go beyond sex?

 

Buddhas have always said, “Transcend sex,” but they were never against it. It has to be used as a stepping-stone.

 

But the priest cannot understand what the Buddhas are saying. He interprets the Buddhas in his own way. He says, “Avoid sex, be against sex. Listen to what Buddha has said.” Transcendence of sex becomes antagonism towards sex. That is a natural misunderstanding that always happens. I say one thing, you understand something totally different — even diametrically opposite.

 

It reminds me of an old opera troupe performing once in a small out-of-the-way town. One old tonsorial veteran wept through shaky but loud strains of Pagliacci.

 

At the close of the aria, one listener stood up and cheered, “Bravo! Bravissimo!”

 

A man sitting by his side was stunned that any opera-goer would cheer this shoddy performance. He turned to him and asked, “Did you like his performance?”

 

“I am not applauding his voice, but his colossal nerve.”

 

It is easy to misunderstand — words are always capable of being misunderstood. And you live on one plane, in the valley, the dark valley, and the Buddhas move on the sunlit peaks, What they say belongs to the sunlit peak. By the time it reaches you it is no more the same. It is an echo of an echo of an echo.

 

And the people, the cunning people amongst you, become the interpreters — they become the priests. They say, “We have understood. Now we will explain it to you — this is the meaning.”

 

Buddhas have always been misunderstood, will always be misunderstood. It is something natural that cannot be avoided, because the language that is spoken on the sunlit peaks is not the language that is spoken in the dark valley of ignorance. The language of the morning is not the language of the night.

 

But there are cunning people who always become mediators. They say, “We know what Buddha means; we will interpret him.”

 

And one more reason: this interpretation, that Buddhas are against sex, gives the priests great power over you. If you transcend sex the priest will not become powerful, but if you repress sex he will become powerful — because by repressing it you will become guilty, unnatural, ugly, in conflict, continuous conflict, dissipating your energy in a civil war. You will become weaker and weaker every day. And the more weak you are, the more easily you can be dominated, possessed.

 

The priest has been powerful, not because he is powerful but because you are weak. His power is located in your weakness. Once you become powerful, the priest will fade away of his own accord.

 

In my vision of a future humanity, when the new man has really arrived on the earth — powerful, life-affirmative, tremendously celebrating, joyous, positive, affirming — the priests will disappear. They will wither away. Who will bother about the priests? Life is more than enough to teach all that you need.

 

And when you learn from life, you will be able to understand Buddhas more easily, with less misunderstanding — because by living your life totally, you will start having a few experiences, a few peak experiences. They will come like lightning and disappear, but you will have a few glimpses of the highest peaks, of the plenitudes of consciousness. And Buddhas will be able to talk to you more conveniently.

 

Communication will become more easy between you and Buddhas if the priests disappear as mediators. They are not mediators, they are not bridges; they are walls, they are barriers. Hence I am against all kinds of priesthood.

 

If you can find a Master, be totally with him, but avoid priests. Avoid those people who have not known truth themselves but are simply like parrots repeating others. If somebody has known the truth, if you see that somebody has the presence and the fragrance, if you feel then BE… be totally with the person. Don’t miss the opportunity, because priests are millions, Buddhas are rare.

 

Once in a while you come across a Buddha, and you may not come across a Buddha again for many lives. So whenever you come across a Buddha, don’t miss the opportunity: risk all! Whenever you come across a person who has truth, authority…. And remember, the man of authority is not authoritative; the man of authority is very humble. The authoritative; man is not the man of authority — he is not humble, he is arrogant. In fact he pretends to be powerful, he pretends to be authoritative, but his authority rests in the Vedas, in the Koran, in the Bible. His authority has no source in his own being, it is not his own experience.

 

A Jesus is a man of authority.

 

Somebody asked Jesus, “By what authority do you speak?” The questioner was asking, “Are you speaking on the authority of Moses or Abraham or Ezekiel? On whose authority are you speaking? The authority of the Talmud? The authority of the ancient seers, the Jewish prophets? On WHOSE authority?”

 

And Jesus said, “I speak on my own authority. Before Abraham was, I am.”

 

Abraham was three thousand years before Jesus, and Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am. I am at the very source, I am at the very beginning. You can get deeper into your being and you can attain to that source.”

 

When you come across a person who IS a source, then be with him by all means. And remember, he will never say to you, “Follow me.” He simply says, “Be with me” — and that is a totally different matter. He says, “Imbibe me.” He says, “Commune with me.” He says, “Let us be bridged” — and that very bridging is the art of disciplehood.

 

If you allow the Buddha, he starts pouring his energy into you. It is not a question of verbal communication, but it exists on the energy level. And then you will understand that Buddhas are never against life. They are always for life. Life is God — how can they be against it?

 

Priests are always against life, because the priests can have power over you only if you are weak. And to make you against life makes you weak. Then all kinds of perversions settle in.

 

SONA YOU HAVE NOT KNOWN WHAT SEX IS YET You may have loved, you may have moved into the gestures of love, you may have even made love to people — but it has remained something physiological. You have not been able to move into it spiritually. You have remained an outsider; you were not a participant in the mystery of it.

 

You don’t know how to participate, hence the problem. You don’t know the language of participation, the art of falling in tune with the energy of the other person, of connecting with the other person on all possible levels of energy — not only of the body but of the mind, of the soul; not only of the lower centers but of the higher centers too.

 

But nobody has been told. And remember, in animals sex is an instinct; in man it is an art. In man everything is an art, in animals everything is an instinct. For example, if you bring a buffalo into the garden the buffalo will eat only certain grasses and will leave everything else. Her choice is predetermined; she is not conscious. She is not really choosing; the choice is mechanical, she is functioning like a robot. It is instinctive.

 

With man, nothing is instinctive. Man has become loosened from the grip of instinct — and that is a great phenomenon. It is your glory that you are no longer instinctive. You have a certain freedom.

 

That’s why man eats all kinds of things. No animal eats like man; every animal has a fixed food. Only man eats ALL kinds of things — imaginable, unimaginable. You cannot believe it! I have been looking into people’s habits around the earth, and this is my feeling, that there is not a single thing in the world which is not being eaten somewhere or other.

 

Insects are being eaten, snakes are being eaten. Snakes? But it is a very delicious food in China. Ants are being eaten in Africa — it is very good for small children, and small children start collecting ants. There is not a single thing that is not eaten.

 

And there is not a single thing that has not been condemned. Everything has been condemned too. Man has absolute freedom.

 

Instinctively, man should be a vegetarian — because his intestines prove absolutely that instinctively he should be a vegetarian, he should not be a meat-eater. Meat-eating animals have small intestines. Man has a very long intestine. The long intestine belongs to the vegetarians, because the meat-eating animal can eat once and then it is enough for twenty-four hours.

 

The lion eats only once a day, but the monkey eats the whole day, goes on eating — because when you eat vegetables you have to eat in much greater quantity. Much is roughage in a vegetable which will have to be thrown; only a very small part of it will be absorbed. The meat can be absorbed totally; it is already an absorbed thing. Some other animal has done the work of absorbing it; you are eating something ready-made. But if you eat vegetables then it takes a long time to absorb it, and it needs a longer passage so that it can remain in your body for a longer period.

 

Physiologically man is a vegetarian, but instinct no longer decides. Even sex is no longer just an instinct. That’s why you can find so many variations in man — you will not find them in animals. Animals are not homosexuals, animals are not bisexuals. And remember, I am not talking about the animals which live in the zoo — because in a zoo they learn from human beings. I am talking about the wild animals. In a zoo you will find animals doing all kinds of things; it is an unnatural state. But in the wild they are always heterosexual.

 

Why has man so many ways of relating — heterosexual, autosexual, homosexual, bisexual, one-to-one or in a group? Man has freedom to choose. And this choice can make you pathological or this choice can make you a Buddha. Now it depends on you, how you use your freedom.

 

Freedom is a dangerous phenomenon — immensely important, but dangerous too. You can fall below the animals and you can rise above the gods — that is the whole range of freedom. No animal can fall from the state he is in. Only Adam and Eve fell; other animals are still living in the Garden of Eden. No other animal has yet eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge — not even the snake who persuaded Adam and Eve, he has not eaten it himself. He is still in the Garden of Eden. Have you heard of the fall of the snake? It has not happened yet.

 

Man has immense freedom, hence he can fall. He is no more grounded in the instincts, he is very loose. He is not like a tree, rooted, fixed; he can move, he is a moving tree. His roots are not fixed but flowing. That is something great — but very few people use it rightly.

 

You can fall like Adam or you can rise like Jesus.

 

Sex has to be learnt. And there is nobody to teach it; no schools exist. No schools are ALLOWED to exist. Everybody is allowed to poison you against sex; nobody is allowed to teach you the right way to sex. Nobody is allowed to make it an exquisite art — it is.

 

There was this boy who at the age of four was washed ashore on a desert island and lived there for many years, until one day when he was twenty-one, this gorgeous blonde was washed up on the beach.

 

They met. She said, “Who are you?” and he said, “Why, I am the sole inhabitant of this island.”

 

She said, “What do you do all day?”

 

He said, “I hunt and I fish and I climb trees and I sit on top of that rock over there and flip pebbles into the sea.”

 

She said, “Well, what do you do about sex?”

 

He said, “Sex? What is sex?”

 

So right there and then, on the beach, she showed him. When it was all over she said, “What do you think of that, then?”

 

He said, “Well, it is all very nice — but look what you’ve done with my pebble-flipper!”

 

Man has to be taught everything. Man has no instinctive grounds, so everything is possible. And if you are not given right directions you will have to grope in the dark.

 

 

Pythagoras’ school was such a school where it was taught how to transcend sex by going deeply into it. That’s why he was tortured, persecuted his whole life, from one city to another. He was running his whole life, from one island to another island. And finally he had to make it an absolutely secret thing. There was no need to make it secret, because he was having some beautiful experiences. He wanted to relate to the people, but the people were not even ready to listen. Hence, secrecy entered.

 

Secrecy is just a safety arrangement. Pythagoras had to go secret. Then only those who were part of the innermost core were told the real secrets. And they were kept oral — nobody was allowed to write about them. Even Lysis does not mention them. And whatsoever he says… you will be surprised. It seems nothing is worth keeping a secret. He is saying simple things: “Take care of your health” — what is the secret in it? Or the golden mean: “Be always in the middle” — why keep it a secret? You will not come across a single secret in all the sutras, because if the secrets were in the sutras then the sutras would have been burnt long before; you would not have found them at all.

 

The day Pythagoras died, the whole school was burnt. disciples killed, massacred, and the whole secret tradition that he had made alive in the West for the first time…. He had searched in the East for years — his whole life he had devoted to the search. All those secret teachings were destroyed.

 

This has always been the attitude of the crowd. This is their attitude towards me, because I am talking openly about some secrets.

 

Man has to be taught everything — how to eat, how to love, how to be. If he is not taught he remains a shoddy affair, he remains something very lousy, vague, ambiguous — something uncertain, something always hesitant. He goes on doing a few things because he can feel a few stirrings of the instinct in him. But there is no clearcut direction, there is no sense of direction.

 

Sona, you will have to learn what sex is. And when I say that, people understand that I am saying that you have not known sex. No, you have known — but your knowing is very superficial. Your knowing is not yet an art, it is not yet a philosophy. You may have a few children too, so you can think that you know what sex is, because you have children.

 

Having children does not mean that you know what sex is. Having children is as easy as putting the light on and off. By putting the light on and off, don’t think that you know what electricity is. Or do you think that you know what electricity is because you can put the light on and off? A few people think that way, that they know what electricity is.

 

I have heard the beautiful story about the man who made the first electric bulb — Edison. For three years he tried hard and then he succeeded. It was a miracle — for the first time, electricity was functioning in human hands. That great energy, that tremendous power, was channelized into human service. And he had worked for almost thirty years on and off, and for three years continuously.

 

And of course when the first electric bulb was on, he was dazed, mystified. He was sitting there looking at it. Half the night passed, and more and more hours started slipping by. And the wife came and she said, “Have you gone mad or something? What are you doing here looking at that stupid light? Go to sleep!”

 

She called it “that stupid light”. And it is said that Edison cried. He said, “You call it stupid light? Do you know what electricity is?”

 

And she said “I know” — because she had always been watching him putting things on and off, this and that. And she said, “I know — you put that on or off. That is electricity.”

 

Another story I have heard about Edison: He went to a small town, just for a holiday. The school of the town was celebrating its annual function, and the small children of the school had made many things to exhibit. He also went. Nobody knew that he was Edison. They had made a few electric toys, and Edison asked the boy who was showing the toys — who had made them and was very proud — “What is electricity?”

 

And the boy said, “What is electricity? I don’t know. I will ask my teacher — you wait.” He brought his teacher, a postgraduate in science, and Edison asked, “What is electricity?”

 

And the teacher said, “But nobody asks such questions — ‘What is electricity?’ Electricity is electricity! But wait, I will call my principal — he is a Ph.D. in science, he may be able to explain it.”

 

He came, and he tried to explain somehow. But how can you explain to Edison? He was the first man to know anything about electricity, one of the greatest geniuses of the world — the only man who made at least one thousand inventions. But the principal was also unaware of whom he was talking to. And he went on giving him explanations, but Edison would say, “That doesn’t fit. Just tell me what electricity is, SIMPLY. What you are saying is not answering my question — you are trying to explain it away.”

 

The principal started perspiring, and a crowd gathered. And then Edison felt great compassion. He said, “Don’t be worried — I am Edison, and I myself don’t know what electricity is.”

 

Just by giving birth to children you don’t know what sex is. Sex is a far deeper phenomenon than electricity — it is bio-electricity. It is yet to be discovered. It is a totally different phenomenon. The electricity that you know is a material counterpart of sex; sex is the spiritual counterpart of it. The electricity that you know is just a dead phenomenon. Sex is alive: it is electricity plus life. It is a far higher synthesis — it has yet to be discovered.

 

There have been a few people who have been working, but they have always been tortured by the society. Wilhelm Reich was one of the persons who was working on sex electricity, but he was condemned, forced into a madhouse, declared mad. He was not mad — he was one of the sanest persons alive in this century.

 

But because he was moving into those secrets of which the priests and the politicians are always afraid, he was going deeper into the mysteries which priests and politicians don’t want to be revealed to the ordinary humanity — because once they are revealed, man will be free — he was persecuted his whole life, and then forced into a madhouse. He died condemned, a criminal, a madman, and he was neither.

 

 

This has been the case with Tantra all along. For three thousand years the science has been developed in fragments, but always the society destroys it. It is too afraid of giving men great secrets which will make them independent individuals.

 

SONA YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT SEX IS You please say goodbye to all the priests. Get rid of all the nonsense that you have been told about sex. Experiment freshly again, innocently. Go into it meditatively — it is prayer. It is one of the most sacred things, the holiest of the holy, because it is through sex that life arrives, and it is through sex that you can penetrate to the very source of life. If you go DEEP into sex you will find God. You will find God’s hands somewhere deep in the world of sexual experience.

 

Sex has to be a meditation and you have to learn the art of it. Sing, dance, celebrate. Sex should not be a hasty affair, it should not be a hit-and-run affair — as it is. Savour it. It should be a great ritual. That’s how Tantra rituals arose. Prepare for it. Become more sensitive, open, silent. When you are going into lovemaking you are entering into the temple of God. Enter only when you are prayerful, otherwise not.

 

Don’t enter with lust, enter with prayer — then you will be able to know the secret of sex. Don’t enter to exploit the other, enter to share with the other. Don’t enter as if sex is just a kind of relief — that is the lowest form of sex. The highest form is not relief but ecstasy. Relief is negative.

 

Yes, sex unburdens you of certain energy, but it simply unburdens — then you have missed the positive part. The positive part is when that energy nourishes you — not only unburdens you but nourishes you, creates something higher in you. When sex is just used as a relief, like a sneeze, it is the lowest form of it.

 

The highest form is tremendously creative: energy is not thrown out of your being, energy is recirculated on higher planes. Energy takes a flight, it starts rising above gravitation. It starts penetrating your higher chakras. It is not a release only, but a tremendous ecstatic flight. And then only will you know that at the deepest moment of orgasm, ego and time disappear. Once you have known that, you will not need sex any more. Sex has revealed its secrets, it has given you the key, the golden key.

 

Now you can use that golden key without going into any sexual activity. Now you can sit silently in zazen, vipassana. Now you can sit silently, dropping your ego and forgetting time. And you will reach to the same heights and you will stay on those heights longer and longer.

 

And a day arrives when you become a permanent resident on those peaks. That day is the day of great rejoicing: one becomes a Buddha.

 

-Osho, "Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2, #3, Q3"