Questioner (Q): You spoke of not giving a lot of importance to the body because after all, we are not the body, we are consciousness. What would you say in cases of homosexuality, wherein society has laid its own conditions and the body is giving its own directions? And in this case, probably the direction of the body would be my own direction and would be my own decision.
Acharya Prashant (AP): I'm not talking of not giving importance to the body. What I'm saying is, know what the body is and that knowledge will tell you how important the body is. You cannot wish away your neighbour, can you? And the body is a lifelong neighbour, we are born wedded to the body. The body is a lifelong spouse, you're born with this spouse. So, it's impossible to not give importance to it, but you must know exactly how important and in which case, in what fields, in which direction.
If I'm sweating on my forehead, it would be not really an act of bravado or wisdom to say, ‘Oh! This is not me, so I'll not wipe it out.’ I would rather pick the towel and say, ‘Fine, be done with it,’ and continue with the discussion. The thing is about giving the body its right place, not letting it dominate your life.
We are not talking of being cruel to the body, we are not talking of ignoring the body or being oblivious to its natural needs. You have to clean it, you have to feed it and the human body is a very delicate thing compared to that of the animals. It requires a lot of maintenance and it has to be provided with all that care.
When it comes to what the society says and all that, on issues like homosexuality. You see, to whom is the society? Again, the society is to the body, right? The one who knows the right place of the body also knows the right place of the society. And if the society starts talking too much, you say, ‘When I do not listen even to myself, how will I listen to you? Who the hell are you to lord over me?’ Right? But that does not mean that you quit listening to others and start following your own dictates. One has to be extremely careful here; this kind of pseudo rebellion will not help.
You see, what is the body? The body is an equipment that always looks at the outside and the body is looking at this and that. So, even when you want to rebel, if you are body identified, you will rebel against this and that, and outside of you is the society. So, you can very well anoint yourself as a great rebel, because you are violating the norms of the society and you can feel very happy. ‘I'm a great rebel, I'm going against the society’. All right, you're going against society, but are you able to go against yourself? No, because that knowledge, that realisation, that insight, you do not have.
So, especially as young people, we love to flout social norms and in the process we became slaves to ourselves. I say, ‘I have a tendency to live my life this way and if the society does not allow me, I'll not listen to the society.’ Fine, very fine, but what is worse, having a master stand outside of yourself or having a master sit within yourself? What's worse? Please tell me. A fellow with dubious intentions and a gun, where do you want him? Outside your door or inside your door?
Q: Outside.
AP: That's why young people love to rebel against the one outside the door, but if the one outside the door manages to sneak in and starts posturing as an insider to the house, as family member, then we say, ‘Welcome welcome, you are me, I'll follow what you say.’ I'll have no eyes to see, that ‘this’ I'm calling as within, ‘this’ that I'm calling as myself is actually something alien, foreign, embedded inside my system. It is not me. It is the outside masquerading as the inside, that we do not know.
So, a lot of these new-age issues, I think, have to be seen in that light. You know, you talk of freedom to live your life the way you want to, my question is, what is this ‘you’? You say, ‘My life, my choice.’ Well said, perfectly agreeable, but what do you mean by ‘my’? What do you mean by ‘my’?
I read somewhere, when it comes to sexual orientations there was this demand, that the society, by way of its education system is imposing heterosexuality on kids. They said, you see, all the stories that you feed your kids are about a man and a woman, so the kids are being artificially taught to be heterosexual.
So, what you need to do is that, right from the age of five or something, you need to expose the kids to various alternate forms of sexuality. You need to tell the kid, ‘You know, you can make out with a girl or a boy or whatever.’ I do not know whether this is freedom. It is for you to think. When you say, ‘My life, my choice,’ what exactly does that mean? To choose, one has to know, right? Just after this, obviously, we have some refreshments served outside here. There is ‘sipitaka’ and ‘tokatoka,’ (unheard random words) what would you like to have? What would you like to have?
Q: I don't know
AP: But if you are given that choice, you know, the two things are kept in front of you, ‘sipitaka’ and ‘tokatoka,’ you would pick up one of them. Now, how would you make the choice? In absence of knowledge, how does the choice get made? Based on what others are having, the one that has a more tempting aroma, the one that looks more like food porn. Right? Now, that's how our choices are made in absence of self-knowledge and then we say, ‘Well, this is my sexual orientation.’ How do you know? Do you know the body? Do you know what this thing called sex is? Is it just something physical or does it have a psychological rather spiritual dimension to it? Do you know any of these?
On the other side are those who are proudly calling themselves normal, because they are heterosexual. What is normal? Even rapists are heterosexuals, does that make them normal? What do you mean by the norm? Do you have to be healthy or do you have to be normal?
There was Covid, in a family of eight, seven got infected. Now, do you want to be healthy or normal? If you're normal, then you would be one of them, you'd be the eighth one. Do you understand what norm means? What is the norm? That which everyone is doing; the state that most people are in, is the norm. Want to be normal? No, you want to be healthy and then, in this age of sickness, health is abnormal, is it not?
So, just because you are doing something that everybody else does, does not make you some kind of a winner. Homosexuality, heterosexuality, this, that—what is sex, first of all? No clarity.
You get to a certain age, you start feeling a certain attraction. It's arising from the body and the social influences and you're just carried away by the current. We'll talk of the normal kind and alternate kind later on, first of all, do we understand the body? Do we understand who we are? Do we understand why this force called sex is so compelling?
You just want to raise slogans on this side or on that side of the divide.
This was not the answer you wanted.
