Listener 1: Some things that I still like, for example I like sex or good food, some other things; could that be blocking me from realization? Or it’s not that?
AP: See how simply you can accept that you like food or sex. How simply you can accept that. It’s okay, it’s fine.
The only thing that you can call as a block is the thing that you do not acknowledge. So you are blocking, that is the block. You are blocking the acknowledgement. One has, as an offshoot of Prakriti , as a current in the whole flow of Prakriti , one has all the right to like good food, like good sex, like this and that, be entitled to his likes and dislikes; be honest.
Be honest; what was this? Good sex. Now don’t call it love and commitment. Be honest; what was it? Good food. Now don’t say, “it was a great spiritual experience.” What was it? It was a good intestinal experience. It was a good experience of the tongue. Now don’t say, “It satisfied my soul.”
L1: But that would still be desire, I am still acting out of desire.
AP: Let the desires be there, what is so wrong with desires?
L1: The book says that desires……..
AP: Desires must be acknowledged as desires, and then they lose their sting. So when she asks, “Darling, what do I mean to you?” You must say, “Body, nice body; flesh.” That is honesty. Now if the relationship has to drop, it will drop. But you must be extremely honest. In fact even saying body, is disguised, generalized dishonesty. You must specifically mention the body part that you fantasize, that you love. That’s what she means to most men, right? That is honesty. Now what is to drop, will get dropped.
L2: So there is specific thing in spirituality about the sex and the transforming sex and all this?
AP: Sex energy simply means the energy to continue. Sex means procreation. Procreation means continuation in time, that’s all. Nothing complicated about it. Sexual energy, all libido is just about the ego’s urge to keep existing. Even after the demise of the body, you want to continue in some way. You want kids, that is why sex is so pleasurable.
L2: It’s ego, right? Ego wants to continue?
AP: So when sexual energy is being talked of, just take it as ego, nothing else.
L2: On the expression of prakriti, the same energy that Osho talks, which express…
AP:
*Prakriti* is time. Time will continue, so sex will continue. As long as this body is there, sex will be there.
Now what do you want to do with it? Just take sex as sex, do not take sex as a Tantrik kriya or something, it is sex.
L2: This body has experienced that in a male becomes a compulsive energy that wants to express and have that pleasure, can also that same energy can be experienced in a different way?
AP: It is not that same energy. It is energyless-ness. Energy would always be a disturbance. Either active disturbance or potential disturbance. The witness has no energy, only prakriti has more and more energy.
L2: Many times when we are feeling ourselves to be a person on journey, we might have experiences, that could be very wonderful, beautiful experiences, and then we identify that with enlightened spirituality and we want to again get there, make it round and stable, it’s an energy-ful moment.
AP: All false, and you wouldn’t have called it beautiful, had you not been coming from a particular cultural and spiritual background. Remember what you are calling as nice and beautiful is not absolutely nice and beautiful, it is nice and beautiful to you as a conditioned person.
L2: But an animal has sex pleasure, it does not have a concept about it. It’s intrinsically pleasurable and human body also has intrinsic pleasures, it can be sex pleasure or a more refined pleasure. Its not due to conditioning, it’s just intrinsic pleasure.
AP: No, the pleasure that the animal gets is physical conditioning, it is not social, but it is there in the genes, it is there in every cell of the body. So it is physical conditioning.
L2: So in the same, some energetic experiences, even if we have no expectation at such a thing is possible..
AP: And that would just be physical conditioning, nothing more than that. Just like good food, the tongue loves it, that is the level of all great spiritual bliss.
L2: But I am just saying that one of the common jobs that I experienced is that we have, we might label it as a more refined type of pleasure then we try to get more of that.
AP: The entire world is chasing that and all the shops are selling that, “Come to us, we will give you spiritual experience, and there is the cash counter.” Spiritual experience – somebody experiences blue lights, somebody experiences a hastening of heartbeat, somebody experiences some lotus sprouting from some part of the body.
L2: But there is also a potential, an ongrowing refinement of the expression of the P rakriti, no? Like, sitting here, it could be taking pleasure from watching sports on TV, drinking beer, having sex, or talking about angels.
AP: Same thing. Morality has taught us that sipping beer is at a lower level than talking of angels and demons and divinity.
L2: Or experiencing them indirectly.
AP: Experiencing your girlfriend is no lower than experiencing the divine angels.
L2: So a piece of dog shit and a diamond is equally divine? And yet we prefer to eat nice food than dog shit.
AP: We won’t prefer, the body knows. In fact, if to the body the dog shit is more useful, the body will know. You will deprive the body of dog shit, you will say, “Eww, doggy poo, how can I have it?” Sometimes the body does need doggy poo. The body will know.
L3: If you are caught in an island, you did not ask for it, but you cannot deny it. You keep searching for food, you might get an apple.
AP: Divine apple.
L3: There are many things some people do, like eat shit which we consider strange.
AP: They are only doing what any man free of concepts would anyway do.
L2: But it might be a concept for them.
AP: Ah, that can happen with anybody.
L2: Such a person can be quite dangerous to preconceived ideas.
AP: That is why you would not allow yourself to be there, if you think.
L2: He derives attachment, as he rules the serpent. Again?
One of the fears that I have experienced in my life, not so much now but one time I was in a lot of fear, it was like, again it is a lot to trust, but if we fully let go in sex without any consideration, then the natural consequence will sooner or later be to have a baby. Like sex is for procreation and I had a morbid fear, it seems like the document of the Buddha, called the Samantabhadra, of the bondage and here he says he dreads attachment, so that, we don’t know what would happen actually if we fully surrender but the fear could be there as in my case, to fully surrender will result in great bondage. We need some measure of control.
AP: No, it is not then a measure of control, I don’t know why you should call it control.
L2: Well, like for example, not to come in touch with or to..
AP: You realize that. It is not a matter of control. You realize that this would mean a continuation of the same thing, the same story. You will have to then role play, you will have to then exist in the form of the sun. It is a realization, isn’t it?
L1: I think he is trying to say that we cannot completely let go, just be in the moment. He has to think about things at the back of his mind.
AP: I fully understand that, but what he is talking of is a point where P rakriti is trying to assert its continuation, right? Pregnancy might set in. If you inseminate a woman, what you get is a baby, he is talking about that particular point. Is that point not same as the point that you encounter when you are trying to do anything that relates to future.
What is a baby? A baby represents something that will grow and mature. It represents the future, and we come across these instances of the future in so many other cases also. Responsibility comes in the future, so it represents that you will have to remain what you are. It represents continuity, it represents that you will have to stay in the stream, that is what it represents, but why must one take that moment as special? That moment keeps coming to us in a thousand ways.
Does it not come, where there is a possibility that if you take one particular action at this time, you will have to bear the consequences in the future, and to bear the consequences you will have to exist in the future? Why is that any special? Just as you deny – ‘remaining the same’ because you have seen that ‘remaining the same’ only means suffering. Future means remaining the same, so you deny the future because you have seen that future means suffering, similarly there also you deny.
L2: I spaced out for a second, I missed what you meant.
AP: I am saying, just because it is bodily gross, blown up, overhyped and it has got something to do with that excitement, moment of orgasm, it is nothing special. We continuously keep coming to these moments where Prakriti is calling the Purusha to become a part of the stream, and the purush remains in its original pristine nature saying, “No, I don’t want any of this.” Now, this is not control, this is just being yourself. The womb is calling. All it wants is one sperm cell. In the form of the womb, the future is calling. The Purusha is saying, “no, sorry, time is not for me.” That’s it.
L2: In Indian mythology, Lord Shiva also had kids.
AP: You see, when you are talking of Parvati and kids, lord Shiva had an infinite number of kids, and in fact lord Shiva married not once but many times. But, when somebody talks about this, I say you must distinguish between Shankar and Shiva. All the mythology must be attributed to Shankar. Shiva is an abstraction, Shiva is the essence, Shiva has no kids. Let Shankar and Parvati have kids.
Now if the question then is whether a natural man, whether an enlightened man would ever have kids, because you started off by saying that Buddha called his son as Rahul ‘the chain’. So is that an ideal that the enlightened man should never have kids or is it possible that like Shankar he may have kids or like Ram. The answer is that the question is trying to set up a model. Kids may be there, kids many not be there. If kids are there, nothing special about it. If kids are not there, no need to..
L2: But for the mind, the fear of family life, in a sense obligates one to be very much involved with the world, that’s perhaps..
AP: So you are not afraid of kids, you are afraid of continuing, you are afraid of as you are. You are afraid of the time that you will have to give, the commitment, the responsibility. What if in spite of the kids, being there physically, you don’t have to undergo this suffering, then nothing would be a problem right?
L2: But you will have to pay their bills.
AP: That may happen, that may not happen, both are okay.
