How to Embrace and Accept Homosexual Desires in Daily Life?
Questioner: Namaste Acharya Ji. My question to you is that as far as sexual desires are concerned, we have learned that, in the case of heterosexual desires, a part of it is biological in nature, and the rest of it is in the mind.
In the same light, how do we look upon homosexual desires, which develop within us? And how do we come at ease with these desires in our daily life?
Acharya Prashant: So many things are happening in Prakriti- it's a very eclectic kind of dance. You cannot have each step of that dance correspond to certain value standards.
Homosexuality is nothing new. It has been present since the very advent of civilization. We have known it to be present since then. It must have been present even before that. Just as you don't ask how to make peace with the unseemly and ungainly thing called a nose—such a bizarre thing, a nose randomly jutting out. It's there. It's a fact. You don’t ask how to make peace with it. Similarly, you don’t ask how to make peace with homosexuality. It just exists. There's nothing special about it. It is there, fine.
And it is present not only in Homo sapiens but in several other species as well. Nothing fantastic about it. How does it matter whether you are homosexual or heterosexual? You're still body-identified. You're either running after a male body or running after a female body. The lust for the body is still there. I don't see how heterosexuals can claim to be inherently superior to homosexuals or others in any way. If there is somebody who can claim to be superior, it is the one who has seen the body for what the body really is—just a biological thing. The superior being is the one who stops running after the body.
It's not about running after that hole compared to this hole in the body. Holes are holes. You're trying to enter the same kind of cave, whether from the front or the back—you'll reach the same place, more or less. And who's inside the cave? Maya.
How does it matter where you came from? Who is the wise person? Who is the liberated one? Who has a life outside of the cave. By "cave," I mean the human body. I do not mean that you should fly out of your body, but there has to be life beyond carnal interests.
If one has homosexual desires, they are desires. If a man lusts after a woman, that too is a desire. And neither of these desires takes you anywhere. Yes, the product of one kind of desire might be a baby. The other kind of desire does not lead to procreation.
But still, does the baby fulfill you? Yes, there is a result in the form of fertilization and reproduction. So, you do get something. But that which you get out of heterosexual activity—does that fulfill you? Does the kid ever satisfy you? Out of homosexual activity, you do not get a kid. You remain unfulfilled. But you remain unfulfilled in heterosexual activity also. No kind of sexual activity is ever going to fulfill you.
Yesterday, I tweeted:-
Before: Spiritual periphery from a sexual center.
That’s the common man, the hypocrite. The center is sexual, but he remains spiritual on the periphery. He does all the religious things—all the rituals, the karmkand, and this and that. The center is sexual, the periphery is spiritual.
This is before.
And then,
After: Sexual periphery from spiritual center.
What you do on the periphery is your business. You mind it. You're not answerable to anybody. But the center must be spiritual. It is the center that counts. What you do on the periphery is Mother Nature’s business. Let the center be rightly placed, and forget about what happens on the periphery. If the center is right, the center will take care of the periphery. The center will take care of the circumference.
These are trivial questions. Do not be weighed down by these.
Red shirt or white shirt, how is that a spiritual question? Is there no better way to look at a human being? Are we so damn internally sexual that the only way we can look at a human being is through his sexual preferences?
You do not ask a person, "Do you read? Do you dance? Do you love? Do you care?" We don't ask. We ask him, "Are you gay? Are you lesbian? Are you straight?"
What kind of assessment is this? What kind of value standards are these? If there were somebody called God, and He could be met, a lot of our purists—the first thing they would ask is, "Are you straight?"
Is there no better question to ask? Is there nothing more important to look at? Body, body, body. Sex, sex, sex. Nothing else.
Questioner: Thank you Sir.
Questioner: A couple of days back, in a session, you said that we must be listening to you, for example, and not elsewhere. But I think one thing that got revealed today is that even if, for example, we are not listening—so-called—but we are always listening to ourselves, as you just said.
So, I think that is as dangerous as listening to others. I mean, because in our own minds, we are saying we are not listening to anyone else, but then we are always listening to ourselves. And at the same time, when we talk about self-introspection—will that also not lead us to self-talk?
Acharya Prashant: Not introspection, observation. Observation means looking at the self but not as the self. Looking at yourself but not as yourself. Looking at Rohit (name of questioner), but not as Rohit because if Rohit looks at Rohit, everything is all right.
Rohit has to look at himself as nobody—as an independent observer. It has to be freedom looking at Rohit, not Rohit looking at Rohit. Rohit has to be free to look at himself. If Rohit looks at himself, everything is already all right—no change.
Introspection and observation are not the same thing.
Questioner: Introspection is more or less the same as self-talk and….
Acharya Prashant: Actually even purer than observation is witnessing. But it has become so loaded that I try to avoid using it. The moment I say "witness," people start having notions.
But the essence of observation is witnessing, which is detachment. Look at yourself, detached from yourself.
Questioner: So, one more question that came from the first response—like, Shri Krishna, as you were saying, was looking to get Arjun to the throne because he would be the one who would then make policies and all. In that case, why didn't Shri Krishna himself want to be on the throne? Because that could have been the best possible...
Acharya Prashant: We'll have to ask him. Maybe it was not practical. The teachings tell of the absolute, but the implementation has to be in the domain of what is practically possible.
I do not see how Shri Krishna would have taken the crown for himself.
Questioner: It looks a bit difficult because of the way he has but then, for Shri Krishna, it probably could have—
Acharya Prashant: He would have thought about it. And having seen that it does not look feasible, he would have discounted it. Were it possible, he would have done it.
See, if it were practical, the teacher would personally pick up each single one of the students and put them in some basket above. But it's not practically possible. Maybe he didn't want to come to a situation where both Kauravas and Pandavas were fighting against Krishna.
Moreover, if that were to be done, how would you get the Gita? For the teacher, it's not so much about doing the right thing himself; it's about getting the student to do the right thing. The Gita is possible only when there is a student who is unwilling, and he has to be brought to the right center and the right action.
There are limits to the teacher's power as a person—you have to understand that. You know what happened to Shri Krishna's own clan after the war? Krishna could not stop that. If we are to believe the legend, the Yadavs all died fighting. They didn’t even need an external enemy; they all fought among themselves and got wiped out. Shri Krishna couldn't prevent that.
It was a very sorry closure to the entire story, and that tells a very important lesson. In the world of people and persons and Maya, the teacher is a very helpless entity, in fact. He knows everything but has power over nothing. And that’s a very, very frustrating situation to be in.
People are sovereign individuals—they decide what they... What becomes of their life is what they decide to make of themselves. The teacher can, at most, speak, guide, show, demonstrate, at most handhold—but he cannot kidnap people and place them at their destination. So, he's pretty helpless in that regard.
Even after the war, not only on Shri Krishna's side, there does not appear to be a happy closure even on the Pandavas’ side.
Questioner: I was willing to ask that—
Acharya Prashant: In spite of the great sermon of the Gita, after the war, you know how destructive the war was. The kingdom took several years to somehow recover. And it was not just Hastinapur. So many other kingdoms had fought and had lost their armies, their kings, sons of kings, entire lines of descendants—they are all lost. And then, one day, Dhritrashtra, Kunti, and Gandhari say, "We are going to the jungle because we are just restless. We do not know what to live for." These three together go to the jungle, and they are burnt alive in a forest fire. That's how they end.
How is that a befitting closure for the mother of five victorious warriors? That's how Kunti dies—in a forest fire. Then, once these three are gone, the Pandavas themselves become very restless. They find they cannot operate in peace for long, so they say, "Now that the descendant is ready," they hand over the kingdom to him, and they say, "We are now going towards the hills."
And it's a very poignant story. They keep climbing the hill, and they keep dropping dead, one after the other. The mighty Pandavas, who could not be slain by thousands of warriors, they are just falling like ninepins, dropping like dead leaves.
And ultimately, who is left? Yudhishthira and the dog. Only these two are left. Even Draupadi falls. That's how the story comes to an end. This, in spite of the fact that Shri Krishna was by them, not only through his teachings but actually in person. Still!
This is a beautiful quote —"That's how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper." That's how one of the greatest stories, an epic story, comes to an end.
What is left of the entire story? Abhimanyu's son, who has been saved by Shri Krishna. Only he is left from the entire story. And then, from him, a new story begins. Everybody else is gone. Pretty melancholy trail, this.
So, there are limits. And when you see that the teacher has limits, then actually you should be even more grateful, that in spite of his limits, he tries and does what he can. If you start taking Shri Krishna as some kind of omnipotent god, then there is nothing to learn from him. You have to look at him as an individual, a person who tried his best.
Questioner: Sir, with regards to the question on homosexual rights, of homosexuals and LGBTQ questions, I was just looking at some data, and it shows here that there is a strong correlation between LGBTQ inclusion and a country's level of economic development. For example, countries with greater legal rights and social acceptance of LGBTQ people tend to have a higher GDP per capita.
Also, it says that the exclusion of LGBTQ people leads to economic inefficiencies, including lost labor productivity, etc. Also, over time, countries that have increased LGBTQ acceptance, such as Brazil, Canada, the UK, and the US, have seen improvements in economic development. So, they did some research, and they found some correlations.
So, in summary, it basically says that protecting LGBTQ rights and promoting social inclusion is not only a matter of human rights but also has tangible economic benefits for countries seeking to maximize their human capital, etc.
In general, also, I think there is a perception that more liberal, more developed countries have more acceptance.
Acharya Prashant: See, it's like this—it's not that for the sake of economic prosperity you must become liberal in thought or have a more tolerant and accommodative attitude towards diverse sexual orientations. Economic growth, etc., is a fallout. Even if economic growth were to be compromised, a liberal attitude must still be promoted.
Now, why do we see the kind of data that you are quoting? It's simple. Usually, LGBTQ minorities are small. I don't have the figures, but I don't suppose any country has more than 5 or 10% representation of these communities in its population—not more than that…
Questioner: Not even that much, maybe 3 to 4%.
Acharya Prashant: 3 to 4%, right? So, it's not about the economic productivity of these 3–4% of people. It's about the remaining 95 or 97%. If those 95–97% do not have a healthy attitude towards these minorities, that tells us about their priorities in life.
There are three people in a country of 100—one is a lesbian, one is a gay, and one is trans. And if the remaining 97 are all obsessed with just harassing these three, what does that tell us about those 97 keeping these three apart? It tells us that those 97 do not have anything purposeful to do in life. How would they be economically productive? It's not about the productivity of these three; it's about the productivity of those 97.
97 people are chasing these three on the basis of their sexual orientation, these 97 have been pretty jobless—nothing to do in life except catch someone and start looking at their genitals and whatever. Leave people to do what they want to do, you focus on your life. Write, sing, create, run. If nothing else, eat and sleep. Why hound others?
And if you are someone who has to look at someone principally on the basis of their sexual choices, that means inherently you are very sexual. And if you are so sexual, what kind of creation would come from you? Only procreation. You cannot be creative.
If I go back to that God thing—if I even look at God and ask him, "Sir, just convince me that you're not gay," that basically means that you are just a sexual beast. And anybody you look at, you are looking at him through sexual eyes.
This kind of person cannot create good literature, cannot do good science, cannot come up with good technology, cannot be a good athlete—there'll be a problem. They cannot be a good politician, cannot be a good anything, cannot be a good parent, a good father, or a good mother. If you are so sexual, then you cannot even be good at sex. You are so obsessed with sex that sex will become a mania for you.
So, these are small things, and they must be kept small. Focus on the bigger things in life. Creation is big. Exploration is big. Inquiry is big. Science is big. Arts and literature—these are the really big things. This is what you should give respect to.
There’s an entire universe to explore, and all you are interested in is some cavities of the body. That's a general observation. Countries that have very intransigent attitudes towards sexual matters are usually not economically developed—economically or socially, on any parameter or index of human development, these countries don’t rank among the top. So, how well-developed a country is—yes, that can be kind of approximated through its attitude towards sexual minorities.
