Question: Acharya Ji, do you sex as obstacle or a useful tool in Liberation?
Acharya Prashant Ji: Sex is for the body, sex is not for you. Sex is neither helpful towards Liberation, not is it a distraction.
There is a fire burning on the kitchen of the neighbour, there is a stove in the neighbour’s kitchen, is it helpful for your dinner or is it blocking your dinner? It is neither helpful nor a problem. It is in the neighbour’s house, it is not in your house.
Sex is the body’s concern, not yours. But you start talking a lot about sex when you become the body.
Questioner 1: Acharya Ji, I asked this question because I have a book by Osho, ‘From Sex to Superconsciousness’. In that book he has said, “Sex is life energy, and one has to channelise that energy.” Do you agree or disagree with that?
Acharya Prashant Ji: It is not the question of agreeing or disagreeing. Isn’t it obvious? When you say, “Sex is life-force, sex is just that which carries forward prakriti’s (nature’s) game of procreation. Why are you so bothered about sex? Let prakriti be bothered. She is vert interested in running and continuously running the cycle of birth and death.
That’s the intention of prakriti that the cycle of birth ad death should continue running. Your intention is just the opposite. Your intention is to drop out of the cycle. So why are you talking so much about sex?
I will again remind you: the stove is in the neighbour’s kitchen. It is neither going to help you with your dinner, nor is it going to take away your dinner.
Sex is the body’s concern. Do not make it your concern. Your concern should be Liberation alone. And when you are fully occupied with your legitimate concern, which is Liberation, then thoughts of sex and such things do not bug you too much.
Sex becomes a great issue for you only when you say, “I am going to have sex and sex is going to satisfy me.” That you can say only when you are a truthless wanderer. Whereas when your prime concern is Truth and Liberation, then you will simply not have the space, the vacancy to think too much of sex.
Anybody who has ever written a critical exam, an exam on which a lot depends? Raise your hands please.
(Many in the audience raise their hands)
On the eve of that exam, how many of you were dreaming of nubile angels, sexy sirens? When you have something really important in front of you, do you still remember sex? May be, some of us are extraordinary.
(laughter)
But besides them, do you still remember sex?
Questioner 1: No.
Acharya Prashant Ji: That’s what.
You life has a very-very important purpose. If you can remember that, then sex will anyway recede into the background. It will no longer remain something important or attractive.
How many of you have attended the funeral of a close one? When you were at the cremation ground, were you sexually excited? Did anything called ‘sex’ exist for you in that moment?
Questioner 1: No.
Acharya Prashant Ji: That’s what.
Sex is only for those who are aimless, Truth-less, purposeless, mindless. They can keep fascinating and whiling away their time. And when you have too much time in which you have nothing to do, then sex is a great means to fill up your time.
One hour, two hours. Ten hours? Time flies away like angels you are dreaming of.
Sex is nothing but a killer of your precious time. You think it’s a means of pleasure, it rather a killer of your precious time. If you could seriously calculate how much of your life has gone towards sex and sex-related activities, you would be horrified, you would be hit by a big factual hammer. You would say, “Oh my god! I have whiled away so much of my precious time just running after sexual pleasure.”
And sex strikes exactly when you have energy. It is an energy-stealer. Not only a time killer, it is a big thief of your energy. It is in your youth that you are the most full of the energy, and that’s when the sexual burglary happens. All your energy is taken away.
And when I say, “Energy,” I do not mean that your energy flows away along with the semen, as some of the gurus are publicising these days. I don’t mean that. Look at the kind of energy you invest in running after a man or a woman. Hours you give to just foolishly thinking about stupid things, don’t you?
And then you come to a point that you feel that the object of your sexual desire is slipping away. And then there is such a great arousal of energy – a mad dissipation of energy. Jealousy, envy, greed, anger. Days, weeks, months, years, simply get lost.
If somebody will ask you, “What did you do in the last five years?” you will not be able to present an account. All you will be able to say is, “I was lost in sexual fantasies.”
Question 2: Acharya Ji, food, air, water, shelter and other things are the body’s need. Everything we can buy with money. We can easily go to the market and buy them. But for sex we have to visit the red-light areas.
Acharya Prashant Ji: Why do you need to go to the red-light areas? That which you want, somebody is eager to supply. It is not a one-sided demand. That which you want is wanted by the other side in equal intensity. You just need to be honest about the body’s demand, and so does the other side need to be.
Questioner 2: So we should frankly express our demand?
Acharya Prashant Ji: You should frankly know that the sexual urge belongs to the body. And the same message goes to women as well. Women must also know that the sexual urge belongs to the body. And both of you in your wisdom must know how to deal with this urge.
Question 3: Acharya Ji, the sexual needs of women are different. For example, they want to be hugged. So is this also classified as a need of the body and is sexual?
Acharya Prashant Ji: Yes. Men are biologically programmed to inseminate. Women are biologically programmed to get fertilised. That does not require any conscious decision of yours. You are hard-wired to produce kids. That’s the agenda of the body – produce kids. But always remember that, that is not ‘your’ agenda.
The body will keep wanting kids, and that will show up in many forms. Whenever you will see a kid, you will feel attracted. And it appears like such an innocent expression of love. It is not love, and it has no innocence either. It is just your biological conditioning expressing itself.
And if you stay with the kid long enough, you will find that the maternal instinct is arising within you. If you are not a mother yet, then the company of a newly born will arouse you to become a mother. That’s a situation many young girls and women face. If there is a birth in the family or in the neighbourhood, they too start feeling like having a baby.
Questioner 3: I have a different problem. I have never had any maternal instinct as such. Am I being selfish?
Acharya Prashant Ji: Blessed! I am sipping the tea right now, and you may call me ‘selfish’ to have it. Doesn’t matter, I will still have it. How does it matter what name you want to attach to it.
Question 4: Acharya Ji, how can sex help get Liberation? I have read his book by Osho on Tantric sex.
Acharya Prashant Ji: You read that book, and that book brought you close to Osho. So the book served it’s purpose.
(laughter)
What else can you serve to a sex-obsessed mind, if he is to be brought close to the Guru? If there is someone who listens only to the call of sex, and a well-meaning Teacher wants to pull this person into a Satsang , what would this person need to be told?
“Come over! Come over! In the Satsang we will talk of sex.”
That’s what Osho did.
Questioner 4: But even in the ancient temples, erotica is mentioned.
Acharya Prashant Ji: There are 1.2 million ancient temples. Why are your talking of only those two temples in which there is some erotica? What does that tell about your mind?
Questioner 3: Is there any such thing?
Acharya Prashant Ji: There are many temples containing many themes, many motifs, many kinds of engravings. Out of them, one happens to be sexual activity. It is okay. Man was depicting everything in the temples. Man was depicting camels and elephants. Why don’t you talk about them?
But it just happened that in a few temples, in a few rare temples, the penis and the vagina were displayed. Now that captures all of your mind. There are temples in which rats are displayed, why don’t you talk about them? But nobody ever asks me, “In that particular temple, cat and mice have been painted. Acharya Ji, please speak on them.” But regularly I get this question: “Acharya Ji, Khajuraho.” So much so that there was a suggestion to hold an entire camp in Khajuraho.
A Temple is not a monolithic idea. Temples come from various motivations. And temples have been built in India over a span of three thousand years. A span of three thousand years, and a geographical stretch covering an entire subcontinent. So obviously there is going to be a lot of diversity.
Somewhere, at some point in time you are surely going to find a temple that is depicting the sexual act as well. And that is okay. If the nose can be depicted in a temple, if the forehead can be depicted in a temple, if the eye can be shown, it is but natural that at some point, somewhere the penis might also be shown.
There is nothing extraordinary about it.
But if you talk too much about the penis, that tells something about your mind.
