Question: Your teachings seems a lot on balance and refining rather than redistributing energy. Would you comment on this in relation to our sexual natures? Most gurus we know either teach of repression or transmutation of sex, i.e. Muktananda, Satchitananda, Yogananda for example, or like Rajneesh, suggest that we abandon the Golden Mean for unchannelled free expression in what ever our desires lead to, in order to work out those desires.
Answer: 
The questioner asks about our sexual natures. Has anyone really got a sexual nature? I think everyone has a Divine nature, for is sex not also Divine? That which ever has been created by Divinity as a natural instinct in man, must be Divine. There must have been some necessity for that, because when the Creator creates, what method did He use of creation or procreation? So everything that is procreated or created in this world is Divine. Some teachers speak of sublimating sexual energies. Now there is only one energy, but man in order to define things compartmentalises it and call one thing a mental energy, another thing a physical energy, and another thing, sexual energy, but of course what they are really talking about is the drive one has in oneself. And there are so many kinds of drives, the drive of love something that urges you on, the drive of hatred, something that makes you hate, and something that makes you want to copulate. And it is said that that is one of the most powerful instincts in man, the desire to copulate. Fine.
Now in man as you know we have three aspects, the animal, the man and the god man. Now, in the sex act, what is used most and on which is the greatest emphasis placed? Is the greater emphasis placed on the animal side of man which is lustful and all that he does is instinctive, born of the instinct which the animal does not understand? It functions within the realms of nature. With man, it is something a bit different. He is a thinking being and being a thinking being, he has the ability to allow the instinctive animal side of him to pour through, or he has the ability of the God-man in him to allow the God-man to flow through in the same act. So, that differentiates the various motivations or the quality of sex. So man can man and woman can perform sex as an animal or as a God, and the thought within him or the refinement of his thinking will take him to either extreme. Now, when some of these teachers talk of sublimating the sexual energy, what do they mean by sublimation? This is a fallacy, it is just not possible. They delude themselves in thinking that I am sublimating the sexual energy, and the Sanskrit term is ‘Orgis’, light, a spiritual force. They sublimate a physical force into a spiritual force, that is a fallacy, for the very physical force is a spiritual force in its self. It is none other than that. So therefore it is a fallacy. And it is a fallacy when they say they could sublimate that energy. What they are doing is causing untold repressions and emotional troubles.
I’ve gone through various Ashrams, where certain Brahamacharis as they are called, are put through these practices. They use all kinds of means including blocks of ice, to still their cravings. Now the physical body does not crave, but the mental body craves and it is the mental self, the thought processes that gives stimulation to the physical body in order to function. So what is required is the mental attitude towards the act, something which is very pure and very holy, but that still is not sublimation. That very physical, energy to turn it into ‘Orgis’ or light is impossible. And with these severe austerities and practices of these austerities, can only lead to repressions, inhibitions. It’s okay for an impotent man, fine.
So what is the answer? What is the answer? Now we do know if you study Freud, you do know, that he boils everything down to sex. Every mannerism, every movement of your hand or your arm is an expression of some sexual urge. Freud of course believes that man is nothing but a sexual entity. And therefore he is wrong because he has only taken into account the animal and the man side of things, and not the God-man side of things, for man is a composition of these three things. Good. Now, by trying to sublimate, you are trying to push away you’re trying to control that desire, you are disturbing certain patterns already set in your mind because man is born with those patterns. And of course the primary aim, as some religions would say, is purely for procreation and not pleasure. That too is an extreme. It should be a combination of both.
But when we come to look at it, does man really know how to indulge in copulation? No, there are very few people that know how to make love, very few people. They know how to have release, a physical animal release, but making love is something far different. In the true lovemaking, the entirety of the animal, the mental and the God-man comes into play. In other words, the physical, mental and the spiritual would come to such an integration, would be so integrated, that during that time the woman is not there, the man is not there, and only love or pure joy remains. And that is the totality of love-making. For it also aids procreation and it is also joyful. It is a meditation. It is a meditation.
So, to come back, when they say you try and sublimate or control sex energies, the repressions that are formed, would naturally have mental repressions and therefore it has to express itself in some way or the other. It could express itself in the man becoming more violent. The man could become more violent. The man could become, – find some kind of insanity within him because the very act of repression must produce an imbalance in a man’s mind, for he is curbing that which should not be curbed. So inhibition is wrong. Trying to control it is wrong. And yet some form of discipline and control is absolutely necessary. How does one do that? That is the question. All forms of control not only in the sex act but any action in life should be spontaneous. It should be totally spontaneous. How does one acquire this spontaneity? It is by understanding. Therefore you would find that those that are involved in meditation and have practised fastidiously and properly, and with that integration, all their actions become spontaneous including the sex act. So in that very spontaneity, there is an inbuilt control where by one does not indulge in excesses but within the limitations of one’s capacity.
Now, you find various kinds of sexual problems where proper functioning is impeded. It could be of physical origin but mostly of a mental origin. The very thought processes, the very conflicts these so-called gurus instil in people’s minds and many of our well known religions do that too and it produces such a fear. I’ve known woman coming to me who are totally frigid, and when you study, go back into their histories, you invariably find that certain thoughts have been planted into their minds by parents and by churches, that this is a sin. And because of that idea so deeply planted in the mind, that when the person grows up, he either becomes non-functional being, or functioning within great limitations, such as impotence and frigidity. So it is again all matter of the mind. And this damage has been done by these people that try to impose something totally unnatural on susceptible minds. You see.
So what one has to get rid of for those that are so afflicted is the unnaturalness. The best thing one could ever achieve in life is to be oneself. And when you are yourself, there is an automatic discipline upon you. Now when an automatic discipline is there, then you are definitely natural. You will not go beyond moral boundaries. Now all these moralities advocated by religions, have a purpose. The purpose is to produce a certain stability in society. When they say that a person must be faithful, faithful to your wife, faithful to your husband, that has nothing, that injunction has nothing to do with the sex act. It is only interpreted in the meaning of the sex act. What is really required there and the basis of this injunction, is that one-pointedness, where all your energies are concentrated on one person in love and devotion. And if you can fully love and devote the object of your love, you can be rest assured that you are close to God. Otherwise, otherwise your energies are so scattered, your mental energies are so scattered, flying here and flitting there and flirting around. It’s not conducive to have that integration, but when you have totally integrated people who become a law unto themselves and those are very rare people. But we are talking of the common person, the man in the street what should he do?
Now if a man is unfaithful to his wife, what makes him unfaithful? It is not the surging and urging powers of sex. No, that does not make him unfaithful. What makes him unfaithful is his search for something. When there is a lack of communication from heart to heart, not body to body, that falls in place. When there’s lack of communication from heart to heart, he searches to find that heart with which his heart can become one. And that is the reason of all the infidelities in the world. All infidelities are based upon search. They are trying to communicate and through that search, what they are really trying to do, unconsciously, subconsciously, is to find Divinity, Divinity through the concrete to the abstract. So therefore when a woman was brought to Jesus, some men got her there and accused her of adultery, he berated those men more. He said, ‘What right have you to put this woman to shame?’ And to the woman, he just said, ‘Be on your way. Sin no more’. Sin no more, what does that mean? Have your mind concentrated, because he did not teach Tratak here. (Gururaj laughs) Have the mind concentrated, have your mind one-pointed, be on your way and fare thee well. But the men that brought her, he berated them, ‘Who are you, and what right have you to judge?’ That person could be such a seeker, such a sincere seeker and using these means perhaps to find. But now, but now the lack is this, although the basis is search, are they really searching in the right way? Are they conscious of the search? No.
So there lies the difference. To search unconsciously and to search consciously are two different worlds. So then it degrades itself into the animal side of man. And yet the search within himself is always for love, to love and be loved. So within, searching in the wrong direction, that love has become fragmented, for there is no man or woman in this world that cannot love his or her spouse. There could be other household incompatibilities, mental, physical, whatever, but they could all be overcome. I am not talking of morality. I am not talking of morality, these are man-made laws. Here in the west, we believe man should have one wife. The Mohammedan people, their religion allows them to have four wives. There were times in the history of the world, where polygamy was recognised and so was polyandry. Why must it always be on the man’s side, no, not for a woman, why not? So polygamy and polyandry was allowed in certain times and that of course in our times and in our society, we regard to be immoral. So morality is based upon time, place and circumstance but the truth one has to find is purity and purity is guided always by motivation. What is the motive in the act?
Now, a truly integrated man or woman whose spiritual practices that has brought about an equilibrium between mind, body and spirit, his actions will always be towards the good, for when he finds that Divinity within himself, that integration within himself, then he will find that Divinity in his wife or the wife will find the Divinity in the husband. They will find that oneness between them where every moment of the day, without making love, they’re experiencing a very subtle orgasm, for the very bliss of Divinity is like an orgasm itself. The greatest joy or being lost, that one knows in this world, isn’t sex, so how can it be condemned. In that period of orgasm, you are lost. Your entire nervous system finds a stimulus and a regeneration. It is something very pure, something very holy. So, how can you sublimate to holiness that which is already holy. You see the mental attitude or the understanding one must have, and having gained this understanding, control becomes automatic. And then why must man’s sex urge be controlled? He is going against his own nature, he is going against his own make-up. For sex is the greatest motivating factor, sex and love, they are strongest, as any Psychologist will tell you, they are the strongest motivating factors in life. Great kingdoms have been conquered, great things have been done, all the greatest things in the world have been done because of the sexual urge, interpreted through love. You look at the paintings, the great Masters of this world, if you look at them, it’s an expression of that very same urge. The quest for beauty, for love is always seeking beauty all the time. Always, the search is for beauty. And one reaches the culmination of it all when beauty can be found in so called ugliness too. For there is nothing in this world that is ugly.
Outside my home where I lived once, we had a tree and it had a very awkward shape. So, a very dear friend of mine came to visit, he’s a friend of the family. He said ‘You must, Guruji have this tree cut down, it is such a gnarled shape does not look nice, rather plant something else’. Then I explained him, I said, ‘Look again very carefully at this tree. Look at its shape. Doesn’t it look like abstract art to you?’ When I pointed the various facets of the tree to him, he found the tree to be beautiful as I find it. You see. So that which is apparently ugly has as its basis, beauty for nothing else exists in this universe but beauty. It is man’s fragmentation that makes him see ugliness or evil in anything, for everything is good. Everything that is manifested from goodness, must be good. It is just man’s mind. The mind is good too but because of the various energies so mixed in it because all the various elements so entangled in it, and man encouraging this entanglement more and more by his thought and behaviour, he gets caught up in it, like a silk worm spinning, spinning silk and the silk is beautiful. And yet he spins in such a way that he finds himself caught up in the very silk he has spun. So now to repeat what I said, that how can you lead, how can you sublimate holiness to holiness? Holiness is holiness and everything is good and holy. Fine.
So, it is these teachers that has been mentioned in the question, they tell you that by controlling the energies, the seminal fluids can be transmuted into light, into spiritual energy. That is a fallacy to repeat again, because that very seminal fluid is also spiritual energy. The very act of touching, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, those are all spiritual energies because without the spiritual basis of those energies, nothing can function, spiritual energy. So by controlling, you are repressing, and repressions and inhibitions can lead – it must have its organic expression and that is why we have so many psychosomatic diseases as well as organic diseases. So it is not a matter of control, it’s not a matter of wilful control. In any case the idea of controlling the seminal fluid is wrong. So it is not an idea of control but an idea of understanding. So that is where this Yogananda and the other Anandas and Anandas, fall flat. Discipline yes, but discipline must be brought about by understanding. You tell a person ‘Do not do this,’ and the more the person mulls around in his mind the idea that I must not eat sweets, the more will he start craving for sweets.
I don’t know if I told you this one story where a young man went to the guru and he asked the guru ‘Please teach me to walk on water’. So the guru says, ‘Yes, fine. I will give you a certain practice before you start walking on the water’. Now the guru refused him and refused him and refused him because the chela was not ready for that. But the chela was so persistent, that the guru got fed up and tired and he said ‘Look, well, I have to do something about this chap.’ So one day he consented and he says ‘Okay, I will give you these practices which you must practise. Sit down for half an hour do the practice then you get up and walk across the water, but while you are doing this practice do not think of a monkey. Because as soon as you think of a monkey, you won’t achieve what you want to achieve’. So, every time, every time he sat down to meditate, the first thought will come is monkey. (Gururaj laughs).
You see, and that is what the injunctions do. Thou shall not make love, according to these guys, sublimate it, that thou shall not make love. And the more you fight that thought, the more you do want to make love. You see that’s the monkey. (Gururaj laughs). See, and then using artificial means as buckets of ice and what have you, it is a waste of time. Well the poor fellow would catch pneumonia. (Gururaj laughs) You see. It is all in vain. It is all in vain. When a proper understanding is given, when a proper understanding is given to the chela, of what love-making is all about, how one should do spiritual practices and find that integration, where in the very act of love-making, you’re not making love but you are becoming love. So the man is not there anymore, the woman is not there anymore, only that vast universal orgasm of love remains. I am talking of my own experiences – right, where the whole universe is captured within you, and you are in a land of great bliss, so much peace, so much regenerating and rejuvenating. So when you have this and filled with bliss, your mind is not on lust. You are not plagued by lust and then you flow naturally.
Someone came to me and he says, ‘I am very normal in every way but when I want to make love with my wife, I, I just can’t do anything’. So talking, talking, talking to him, I found out that he was planning the whole day through when he reaches home, planning to make love. Now how can you plan to make love? That’s lust that’s not love. You don’t plan. It has to be a spontaneous flow between man and wife. It must be a happening, not a pre-meditated act, ugh, not a pre-meditated act. It must be a happening. So, I said ‘What you do in future is, you don’t plan, nothing, just flow. And there is nothing wrong with the lounge carpet’. (Gururaj laughs). You see.
So what I am telling you here now is a great truth, that love must flow. It is the nature of love not to be stagnant. Love can never remain stagnant. Love must flow, whichever way with your wife. Love must flow. And if you pre-plan the whole day through then if you have too much animal in you, you’ll do what you want to do but that is animalism. It is not the love of the man-god, which you really are. When I say man, I mean woman as well, it works both ways. That’s the way lawyers you know do their contracts and they probably say a man is mentioned, it means – I don’t know the legal terminology, good. So love must flow and that very flow, if given scope by some form of integration within your self, it becomes spontaneous, and it is automatically controlled according to your capacity, there is no waste. There is no waste. For even in love, there is a principle of economics. Did you know that even that very flow, there is a principle of economics? And here it means there is a system, an unsystemitized system. In other words, it forms a pattern and all patterns have system. It’s like a poem, so free and yet confined in its very meter, and yet enjoying all the freedom. That is what the sex act has to be all about.
So the question of sublimation does not remain any more, for it is already sublime. And if it is used as a natural flow of love in that union. Why does a man or woman want to be very close to each other? You might have heard this and you might have seen this, ‘Beloved, I love you so much I could eat you up’. You light within me. What does this really mean? It’s not an expression of lust. It is the intense longing and desire for union, unification of the spirit. And when that unification occurs between man and woman, remember you have tasted of the essence of the Divine, for the spirit in the woman and the spirit in the man is but one spirit. The spirit is indivisible, it cannot be divided. So, but it has brought to your experience the oneness. So an orgasm as God or love cannot be explained. It can be experienced. You see. And the men with all their bravados about all their conquests, and, its all rubbish. Bravado, all these boastings, they’re only boasting about their animal selves. If any man makes love to his wife just for the sake of going to bed, it’s terribly wrong. It has to be a natural flow where there is no intention. It’s a happening as I said. It’s a celebration, for everything celebrates. The birds and the bees, they celebrate. And like the bee gathering from flower to flower to produce honey, so we gather all the fragmentations within our minds and cells to produce that honey of love. You see.
So let us recap a bit, that love can never remain stagnant, it has to flow. Inhibiting sexual energies or trying to, inhibiting sexual energies can only lead to mental repressions. Trying to sublimate sexual energies is a fallacy, because sexual energies are divine too. They are sublime, so how can you take the sublime to the sublime. It is there already. So what do we have to find? We have to find naturalness by personal integration and that is brought about by spiritual practices. And having this personal integration then your demands of yourself or the environment are, or of anything and anyone would be self controlled because integration brings about the awareness and the understanding. So then the sex act becomes one of the most beautiful experiences man can ever have, short of the unity consciousness of a saint. Clear. Okay, fine.
Now, we have other teachers like Rajneesh that advocates free sex, just do what you want to do. He maintains that allowing the animal instincts, giving animal instincts vent, they dissipate themselves and that is also a fallacy. It is a fallacy, because, because, the more you give anything a vent, the more you strengthen it. Yes, it’s like a drug. A person takes two grams of a drug today and after a while he will want three grams and then four grams and five grams and ten grams. The appetite becomes insatiable. So that is wrong, and this very idea has lead to permissiveness. Now the permissiveness we find and I have seen so much of it all over, is because of these wrong teachings and wrong ideas perpetrated. It is because of these teachings and wrong ideas perpetrated amongst people. Study juvenile delinquency, for example, how is that brought about? There are many sociological factors, like home environment, education, parents, systems of education, many factors but one of the most important factors why a child becomes a delinquent is, because he is searching. He is searching for something which is lacking in his life and he tries to find it in drugs and all kinds of other abuses. And that is a sure sign of the status of today’s world, a status of fragmentation. The child in all the things he does, is looking for fulfilment. If I had my way I would like to introduce spiritual practices right from kindergarten level, so the children could grow up more integrated. Not at university level, where the minds are fixed already on certain things. Patterns, grooves are made and is more difficult to erase those grooves and put in new grooves. But from a child, stand one, sub A onwards, that will make the society a better society.
Now, this is the basis of permissiveness and the teachers that advocate this kind of permissiveness are doing a great injustice, a very, very grave injustice. I know in some of these Ashrams that teach this under the name of Tantra Yoga, although the teachings are of a very, very high level, the level is so high that you can only indulge in these things after you have forgotten yourself and the object when the subject is not there and neither the object, then only can Tantra Yoga be practised. That means Tantra Yoga can be practised by people that have reached a high evolutionary stage, who are functioning in that oneness, for then only, as we said before, the thought of lust is never there. The thought of lust is never there and there is no forced control but there is a spontaneous control. But those teachings are not good for today’s world, it leads to debauchery. I have been to some of these Ashrams in India, including Rajneesh’s Ashram, and I told Rajneesh, I spent about two hours with him, that’s about three years ago, and I said ‘Look, the teachings of Tantra are of a very, very high level that we know, but you are teaching to anyone that could pay you six hundred dollars a month to be in the Ashram’. So it becomes a money-making thing, and people flock there for these various experiences under the name of religion and philosophy.
I believe there was a complaint yesterday, when we were ten minutes late at lunch. We can always pick it up tonight, if we leave out anything.
Yes, so I told him of this. And he’s got a very small following of people that do understand the basis of Tantra, where a person has reached such a high level, that it is not actually sex that they are after. It is not the act of copulation, although done that way, but the act is performed to reach a deep state of meditation. And that deep state can only be reached if a person is integrated. But there I’ve seen, after – Rajneesh normally speaks in the morning at half past eight to about half past nine – and after his talk was over, I saw half a dozen couples just rolling on the floor. I told him what is this? What is this? At least there should be some measure of decency. Although nothing is indecent really, but within the confines of the society we live in. In that case, why don’t we all run around down Oxford Street and Regent Street all naked? Nothing wrong, after all clothes were designed by man. You were not born with clothes. So why not just be natural like that? Be without clothes, go shopping, oh, you don’t need to go shopping in Oxford Street for clothes. (Gururaj laughs). See.
So, so it is a calamity. The only – both are extremes, that sublimation gag and the permissiveness, gag, they are extremes. The answer lies, to have a sane stable society, is not by morality, the laws of morality. The more you say, ‘Though shalt not kill’, the more they kill. What are all these wars about? Aren’t they anti-Christian? Yea, but its legal. You see. Doing it for a good cause, killing masses. Not one at a time. So none of these are followed, none of these injunctions are of any use if a person has not developed the primal purity within himself first. And that purity comes very spontaneously because essentially you are pure. Essentially you are pure. The well-polished diamond is there in you. A bit of dust has gathered. So spiritual practices remove the dust and lets the diamond shine in its pristine purity.
So there is only one solution, is to find integration. And when you find integration, you rise above it all. It is automatic control where you become desireless, and yet you perform, yet you act, the way you normally did act. Like the Zen story that you all know. The Zen Master is asked, ‘Before you reached enlightenment, what did you do?’ He says, ‘I drew water, I chopped wood, I made fire.’ ‘And after enlightenment, what did you do?’ ‘I drew water, I chopped wood, I made fire.’ But look at the difference in quality. What? Look at the difference. One is an act of God, although the other is an act of just anyone. You see, so there is a different stamp put on things although the act remains the same. You see? One is totally from an integrated level, while the other is from an animal level.
So, an enlightened man for example is a master of circumstances. He is a law unto himself. We can’t touch him. He might do things that might seem not in compliance with the laws of society, but yet, there is, the motivation is so, so different, is so desireless that even the acts he performs, is not because of desire, and yet the same acts are done. So, we too can reach that stage by understanding, perhaps not total integration, but the nearer we are to the goal, the more and the greater the quality of all our actions would be. You see?
So therefore we cannot judge anyone really. But one thing is this, whether we have to avoid the extremes of sublimation and austerities and extreme permissiveness, wantonness and an open license, and an open license. We find the middle road, and the middle road can be found by persevering with our practices. Okay. (Bell rings for lunch).
There is quite a lot we could talk on the subject. We shall see how we carry on. Okay.
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