Sex, or the hope of it, is what makes life worth living for the vast majority of humankind.
One contemplates suicide when future indulgence in sexual pleasure becomes inconceivable. This is my answer to Camus' question. (Albert Camus asked if life is worth living.)
Sexual pleasure has many forms, other than the basic. Enjoyment of a spicy, tangy dish is related to the sex centre in the body.
The mind cannot survive without pleasure. Meditation is the choiceless observation of desire, of mental starvation and of inward silence.
To be counted as a sexually inferior creature is the primary complex with which humans suffer. All complexes derive from this.
The clash of Man versus the Society is based upon man's craving for more and more pleasure for himself. Therefore a sexual creature is alienated from the world. A sexual man is in a shell of his own.
Freud regarded the libido as the central drive of life, which, when thwarted or suppressed leads to various kinds of neuroses and maladjustments. However, the only solution he could hint at was reconciling one's desires with the social context. For me, that is not acceptable. That is a never-ending invisible war.
The more permissive a society, the more alienated its citizens. Competition makes a man cruel.
To repeat: Sex, or the hope for it, is what makes life worth living for the vast majority of humankind.
Imprisonment as punishment is primarily a restriction on sexual activity. Nowhere in the world is normal sexual indulgence allowed while being imprisoned.
A sexually indulgent personality is happy in the world. Therefore is religion opposed to sex. Religion teaches transcendence from the world.
A sexual creature does not want freedom in the sense of transcendence.
All pleasure is imaginary, but in case of sexual pleasure, it is obviously so. A pleasure in the form of a soft cushion or having warmth in a cold climate is understandable. Sexual pleasure, on the other hand, is not understandable at the body level. To touch your mother, or Mother Teresa, does not give you sexual pleasure, even though the touch is of a female human being.
The pleasure of sex is not due to the sensations.
Sexual pleasure is the most concentrated form of mental pleasure.
Sexual pleasure is a pleasure (usually) requiring sensation, but sensation itself is insufficient for it. On the other hand, the normal pleasures require only sensation, without requiring concomitant mental imagery.
In sex, one enters, as it were, a dream world.
The touch of a female is pleasant to a male not because it is a touch, but because it is the touch of a female. This consciousness of a different other is the fundamental basis of sex. The saliva and lips of a woman are of basically the same nature as the saliva and lips of a man. They why is kissing the opposite sex pleasurable?
The attraction towards the opposite sex is the urge to fulfill one's incompleteness. It is the craving for the unknown.
The individual is ever incomplete, because he separates himself as a body-mind. His urge for completeness is what drives his life. But he wants to remain separate and be complete at the same time. And that can only happen if he engages in a series of momentary completions.
"In sex, one experiences a momentary egolessness and timelessness." (Osho)
Only with the death of the individual soul, in the realization of its oneness with God, does the incompleteness die.
The promiscuous man needs ever more conquests fo fulfill his insatiable emptiness. The promiscuous man is the epitome of internal contradiction. Wanting completeness and wanting to continue as a separate individual.
The sexual man and the spiritual man are after the same goal. Their quest is the same. However, the sexual man chooses another incomplete entity to complete himself whereas the spiritual man seeks to merge with the Complete. The sexual man needs an unending series of stimulations, the religious man seeks an end to this cycle.
The true crossroads of life, the Great Choice, is between Sex and Spirituality. They cannot coexist.
The spiritual man is not sexual. He does not consider a female to be anything other than himself. And that is why, he is unable to obtain any kind of pleasure from a woman, or rather, from the whole universe.
A spiritual man, even if he so seeks, will not find anything pleasant in the world. Hence, to enter spirituality in the true sense is never to look back. Those who are still not convinced that the world does not afford the possibility of being happy, should experience it some more.
Sex can however be a stepping stone to spirituality. Through sex, one can get a hint of where one is erring, and where-in lies the source of happiness. But one has to turn one's back on sex eventually. But this crossing the stream by swimming through it is dangerous. Sexual acts leave deep impressions on one's psyche.
Osho's teachings are not for everyone.
That is why celibacy is advocated in religious orders. Natural, spontaneous celibacy is not possible without meditation.
As in Khajuraho, one enters the temple only after having seen everything, and having left it all behind. One cannot enter the temple with a desire for the worldly. That MUST be finished.
The body gets old for sex, but the incompleteness is ever young. An old man or woman is as sexual as a person of 23, only they may not be as sexually active. They are resigned to their incompleteness.
A fierce effort to fulfill one's incompleteness is what youth is all about.
If you are not disenchanted with sex, you are attached to the whole world. Then any demonstration of one's renunciate nature is a pretence.
Depression is not disenchantment. Disenchantment is joyous.
The whole sphere of man's activity: travel, entertainment, literature, arts, politics, technology, etc. is geared towards more opportunities for sexual pleasure. Money and power are pleasant for this very reason. The mere potential for sex affords great pleasure. This must be understood. There is so much of indirect sexual activity that only a rather subtle reading of it all reveals its true nature. The war between nations is for more sexual pleasure, for a few important individuals. It is a sexual battle on a grand scale.
The sexual man is not the perverted man, he is only innocently misled. The pseudo-religious man is the real pervert. He is burning with desire and his high self-image denies this pleasure.
However, almost every man carries within him the guilt of sex. This is our heritage.
Women are less guilty about sex, though they are seemingly more reticent, which is but a facade.
Guilt about sex concurs with a desire for transcendence.
Guilt about sex is a regretful admission of one's bondage to the world.
To live a guilt-free life is to be truly religious. And that can only happen when one transcends one's incompleteness, and the woefully inadequate efforts to fulfill it, i.e., when one transcends the need for sex.
Wet dreaming is the involuntary indulgence in sex. Its occurence is of great significance to the spiritual seeker. Through it he recognizes his own conditioning and his own patterns of pleasure. Through it he can find out the truth about his so-called celibacy.
Whether or not voluntary indulgence leads to bodily dissipation, it certainly leads to a dull, repetitive and habitual mind. But that is what the world wants from you. To use your sexual energy in any other way is to be creative and thus to be anti-social.
To be social is to ratify the fundamental dictates of society. That is to be a good citizen. Your allocated freedom is to keep boiling in a container. You cannot leave the container.
Only a non-sexual man can be a true revolutionary. That is why the vast majority of great philosophers, saints, artists, scientists, writers, painters have led solitary and relatively unsexual lives.
To be a social animal, you should be sexual, but that only, according to the forcefully established rules of the game, which everybody wants to flout.
The seeming attractiveness of the object is in direct relation to the hunger of the subject.
Conditioning plays a part, but the fact of being a male, or a female, is also a conditioning, though one of the deepest ones.
Given a choice of objects, the subject chooses from his conditioning. Hence, make-up and fashion seek to affirm the conditioning of the subject. They are tools to fool you.
But also, using make-up and being fashionable asserts the fact that I am also hungry. That is why make-up, high heels, garters evoke sexual feelings.
"The adornment with many beautiful clothes and cosmetics, is the charming factor. Decorated almost like a temple, the body deceives the mind into thinking it is desirable."
"If you are not disgusted by the natural odours and secretions of the body, nothing can disgust you."
However, the term "sexual object" is a misnomer. Sexual pleasure is fundamentally linked to the fact of the "object" being a subject in its own right. Subjectivity is sexy. Incompleteness (in other words, ego) is erotic. Therefore make-up, asserting the fact of my hunger (and thus of my incompleteness) is sexy.
It is not easy to lust after a happy man. He doesn't need you.
To fall in love with and to lust after a truly awakened man is impossible if you get an insight into his egolessness.
The more complete a male or a female, the less it will inwardly seek a sexual object. Whether that inward need expresses itself outwardly is another matter. Sexual hunger is the prime symptom of inner boredom.
One cannot cheat oneself about one's desires, ultimately.
To be sexually hungry and yet passive is very common. It is a chore to go out and seek a subject. But there are alternatives such as imagination, pornography and masturbation. But they also need imaginary partners. It is impossible to satisfy yourself with masturbation without an imaginary partner. You might ejaculate, but you will remain unsatisfied.
And observe the curious fact that the mind gets tired of imaginary partners as well. It needs novelty in imagination. This is the key to understanding the force of pornography.
Sexual pleasure is an invention of the mind. Oh, but what an invention! The whole world is chasing this chimera.
To completely understand one's mind is to go beyond sex. Not to have gone beyond sex is not to have understood one's own mind.
The mind is the phenomenon of bondage of the consciousness to the body. The unravelling of this phenomenon, the unmasking of all its duplicity and deception, is the path to Nirvana.
To be sure of one's attractiveness is in itself the attractive factor.
The universal desire to remain young is the desire to be still considered sexually attractive.
A sleepy eyed, yawning woman looks sexy because she is half-conscious, the state of mind in intercourse.
The desire to please the other, in sex, is a desire to feel desirable oneself. That is why premature ejaculation etc. is considered so shameful. If one cannot "satisfy" the other, one is no good.
During intercourse, one closes one's eyes because one wants to achieve concentrated tactile pleasure. And also, because one wants to be unconscious of anything else.
Perfumes are the most potent means of inducing hypnosis on the mind, before, and while in the act. Perfumes appeal to the dog in man, and to the bitch in woman.
Breasts and buttocks are merely lumps of fat. What great attention is paid to them! The pleasure that one gets from touching the buttocks of a woman, and in sucking her breasts; what pleasure could be more imaginary in its essence! And what a great pleasure is it considered! Is it as pleasant to touch a mound of butter?
The world, sansaar, is the arena of deception. Take heed.
It would be hard to find an object smelling worse and dirtier than a woman's vagina. And yet, and yet, the whole of mankind is bent upon smelling and licking it.
It is desire which makes things attractive. Objects are not attractive in themselves.
Foreplay, oral sex, anal sex, etc. are the inventions of human mind. The inherently simple act of sexual intercourse has been elevated to a science, an art, and a subject of discourse in humankind. What vast energies have been spent on this aspect!
Observe the power of illusion! Nocturnal emissions exist only in humans, the hymen exists only in humans, well-formed breasts exist only in humans.
To engage in this supreme battle with the downward flow of energy is the only task worthy of man. Awakening is the reversal of the flow of one's life-energy.
This is the real Mahabharata, the epic battle between the individual soul and the world of illusion.
The pleasure of ejaculation is a purely physical pleasure. But ejaculation is reached through a process of arousal in which the mind plays a central part.
Nature has designed the vas deferens and related organs so that the passage of semen from the inner reservoirs to the glans of the penis is accompanied by strong pleasurable sensations. There is a plethora of nervous endings in this small region.
If you dispassionately observe an orgasm happening to you, you can find out that there is nothing really special about the sensation of ejaculation, only a feeling of the hot spurting of semen through the passage, release of tension and a tired relaxation. It is due to the great bottled-up energy that the sensation of ejaculation is so intense. And this bringing your nervous system to a boil is the handiwork of the mind. Ejaculation is the easiest release from this tension.
But this tension passes away on its own if just observed. Indulging in release of this tension through ejaculation re-inforces the sexual habit pattern.
If you are in a state of heightened sexual arousal, just observe the "lust" within. And do not act upon it, either to suppress it or to get rid of it by an act. Then you can learn about its nature, its imagery, its tricks and its ultimate demise. Be ONE with your lust. Don't condemn it
(for the female)
It is my experience that most females get immersed much more in the sexual act when they are fully aroused. They lose their awareness of the process almost completely. They become animals in the heat of the act.
They have pivot points, e.g. the neck, the labia and clitoris, aerola of the breasts, toes etc., in their bodies which make them insanely aroused and which take them to the point of no return. Their body is more complex than that of the male.
I cannot say much more about their sexual response since I only have a male body to be aware of. But their spectrum of response is wider than that of the male. To be disillusioned with sex is harder for a woman. Her body-mind is wired more tightly around this instinct (camaflouged as love, romance, sharing etc.) That is perhaps why one hardly ever finds a woman who wants to go beyond the need of men. That is perhaps why the vast majority of awakened humans have been born as men.
The urge to transcend is more evident in a man than in a woman.
Woman has a greater need to feel emotional involvement. Her greatest desire is for a man who will want and treasure her during the day as well.
If a man's desire for a woman is stronger when he is in bed with her, or when he wants her to be in bed with him, it will necessarily be weak otherwise.
Women want men to be attracted to them, but this very attraction causes the demise of love. Attraction is not love, attraction is the urge to gratify oneself, it is the very antithesis of love.
The key to understanding one's sexual response, if one finds it impossible to remain celibate and to meditate, is to be aware while in the act, and not be immersed. This is the basis of Tantra. But this is extremely difficult. It is immensely hard to distance oneself from a pleasurable sensation.
That is why copulation with even a million women will leave a man still hungering for more. Because the millionth and one woman is still unknown to him.
The known is not sexy. This is the basis of the revulsion involved in incest. Sooner or later, as they become familiar, the wife/husband are included in the list of reviled sexual objects.
The force of pornography is to be found in its depiction of sex with sexually unfamiliar persons. A husband and wife making love is not an erotic story.
Thus, the one whose soul has realized its union with the Infinite, only that person can go beyond sexual attraction. Only that soul has attained to Knowledge. And only that Knowledge obliterates this endless seeking of the unknown.
"The reflection of the supreme consciousness as an individual soul (Abhaas) is tied to being identified with the body through the urge for copulation."
The primary use of sensation, for the mind, is to get sensual pleasure.
"To go beyond rebirth, one has to finally get disenchanted from sex as a means to happiness. As long as this enchantment remains in whatever form, the reflection is re-tied to being identified to a body-mind after the expiry of this one."
Sex is the cause of life, in a most fundamental way. It is the cause of wanting to remain separate.
The World, sansaar, is built through sexual desire and the attachments and habit patterns it establishes.
The indulgence in pleasure in the waking world is like having a nocturnal emission in one's dream at night. One derives imaginary pleasure from imaginary objects. This is the only lesson one needs to learn. To see the pleasure and the pleasant object both as born of imagination.
The highest wisdom is to see the pleasure seeking subject also as imaginary.
"Ego and Lust are in touch as the high tension electric cable touches the train locomotive. Even if just a hair's breadth distance is introduced between them, the train will come to a stop."
"Even after awakening, the momentum of lust continues for a while."
"The attraction of a man towards a woman is because he perceives her as different from himself. This attraction towards something different from oneself can also be the fundamental basis of attraction to an awakened man, and that attraction can ignite the fire which will burn down your ego."