Positive thinking and good behavior

How to deal with negative memories from past and anxiety about future – this is a huge topic regarding which I feel slightly incompetent to write, but based on whatever little I have gathered from wise people’s teachings and personal reflection, my suggested steps to do this are below:

1. Use this master technique based on a great insight at the exact time when negative feelings start arising: Feel negative feelings (anger,sorrow, frustration, hopelessness, anxiety) without any thinking. One can feel without thinking, because feeling and thinking are two different processes. If you doubt this, just reflect over this – “Do we first feel headache or we first think that I have a headache?” , “Do we first feel hunger or we first think that I am feeling hunger?”. What happens when one feels without thinking - positive feelings (joy, peace, etc.) become stronger in absence of thinking and weaker when combined with thinking (when you feel peaceful or happy, try to continue that state of feelings without any thinking and you will find that your feelings of peace and happiness grow deeper and more intense in absence of any thinking process.); whereas negative feelings (anger,sorrow, frustration, hopelessness, anxiety),  become weaker (and eventually vanishes completely) in absence of thinking and grow stronger when combined with corresponding thinking. For example, when one feels angry over something, if one adds corresponding negative thinking, then his/her angry feelings become stronger and stronger – everyone can notice this; the same holds true for all other negative feelings like sorrow, frustration, hopelessness, anxiety. Even when one tries to use positive auto-suggestion, it becomes more like repressing negative feelings particularly, when negative feelings are stronger – thus, this creates psychological problems in long run. But, if one can feel negative feelings without any thinking process in mind, those feelings will grow weaker and eventually will vanish completely (without any repression) within few seconds/minutes. So, now the technique - Whenever any negative feelings arise in the mind, say to yourself 3-4 times ‘Feel this anger/sorrow/frustration/hopelessness/anxiety without any thinking‘ and try to do that by paying attention to just feelings without using thinking process. To help this process of paying attention to just feelings without using thinking process, one may pay attention to the sensations caused by those feelings in the region of head, which are few inches inward from the middle of two eyebrows (Yoga calls this Agya/’Third Eye’ Centre). Keep on doing this till negative feelings vanish completely. When those feelings vanish completely, (say, heartfelt thanks to me :) – just kidding!) move on with your work. Do this whenever negative feelings arise within you. If this technique clicks you, then you will realize that this is the most efficient and fastest technique in yoga to deal with negative feelings. If this technique doesn’t click with you, here are some other techniques for you -
   1. Additional technique 1 – Focus on your breath, while keeping breath completely natural. Give yourself positive auto-suggestion with positive word chosen carefully as per the type of negative feelings. Some examples are - ”I forgive those who have hurt me.“; “I am very peaceful/happy/relaxed/positive/optimistic.” such that one short-word (a long word should be broken into multiple short-words to suit the time-period of natural incoming and outgoing breath. Like,  “peaceful” word may be broken into two short-words “peace” and “ful”) is said with one incoming or outgoing breath (breathing should be 100% natural throughout the process).  For example, when you inhale, say “I”, when exhale next say, “am”, when inhale again, say “very”, when exhale again, say “peace”, when inhale again, say “ful”; when exhale again, say “I”, when inhale again, say “am”, and so on. Keep on doing this for 5-10 minutes (or more if the negative feelings are much stronger) till you feel peaceful and positive again. The reason why this technique works is because, the mind’s negative feelings get neutralized through positivity and relaxation produced by positive auto-suggestion given in a manner,  which is rhythmically linked with our natural breathing process.
   2. Additional technique 2 - To make the mind free from corresponding negative thinking, which just adds more fuel to the fire of negative feelings, ask yourself 3-4 times “What will be the next thought/imagination/talk in my mind?“  or “What will I think/imagine/talk next in my mind?“. If this technique clicks with you, your thinking process will stop for some time and you will experience thoughtless awareness. Some other thought might come after some time, in which case you repeat the same method to remove that thought also. The reason why this technique works is because the thinking process stops for some time when the mind encounters an unknown question or experiences something unknown, unexpected or unpredictable. And in absence of thinking, the negative feelings also vanish within few seconds. One common experience of everyone is – feeling the peace of thoughtless awareness, when one sees a new, beautiful painting/”natural scenery” or meets a friend after a long time. This happens due to above mentioned reason.
   3. Additional technique 3. If one watches/observes one’s thoughts in an emotionless manner (which is same as saying, without feeling positive emotions or negative emotions about them, i.e. without judging them good or bad, joyous or sorrowful, positive or negative.), they vanish, leading one to experience the peace of thoughtless awareness for next few moments. So, the technique is following – Whenever the negative feelings arise, say to yourself 3-4 times “Watch these thoughts emotionlessly.“/”Do emotionless watching/observation of these thoughts.” and try watch the thoughts in mind in a completely emotionless manner. If you do this properly, all thoughts will vanish and the mind will experience the peace of thoughtless awareness for next few seconds. After sometime, some other thoughts will come; in that case, repeat the above technique so that they also vanish. And keep on doing this for around 5-10 minutes (or even longer) till your mind becomes free from negative feelings. The reason why this technique works is – by making the mind thoughtless, the negative feelings also vanish soon, as explained in the beginning.
2. Daily do yoga (particularly thoughtless awareness and breathing exercises – kapalbhati, nadi shodhana pranayama and Maha Bandha are most strongly recommended to readers) to store up peace and positivity in mind so that their cumulative effect is able to neutralize and help you in removing negative feelings arising in future. If you are wondering, how peace and positivity can be stored in mind, just think over this – “Can stress and negativity be stored in mind?” – definitely YES. Similarly, peace and positivity can also be stored in mind and yoga is very helpful in doing that, because it makes us experience thoughtless awareness, which is the highest state of peace and relaxation; balances our hormonal system (hormonal imbalances also cause stress and negativity) and helps in giving us a broad and positive outlook by increasing our consciousness level.
3. Work very hard, taking care of every minute of your time – focusing on present task with full devotion will surely fulfill you despite negative past. Recognize that life is in present & not in dead past. Recognize that life always comes as present; what you know as past, also came as present to you and what you imagine as future, will also come as present to you. So, live and enjoy life in true sense by living in present.
4. Recognize that future is more  important than past; that past is in no one’s hand as it is already gone for ever, but future is in our hand. So, leave attachment to the negative past so that you can focus your attention to making future happy and bright.
5. Recognize that every relation and every possession is temporary by nature. Everyone has to leave this world one day alone, with neither any relation nor any possession to accompany him/her. If that is the unchangeable reality of life, then why should we not use our life in a positive, joyous and creative way rather than keep on making life negative and sorrowful over loss of ‘by nature impermanent’ relations or possessions.  So, please remove all attachment to negative past, so that you can enjoy your life and helps others in doing the same.
6. People who hurt you, cannot be transformed by your hate or your hurting them due to reaction. In the worse case, do not interact with them, but never keep on scratching your old wounds by feeding feelings of hate, disgust and revenge. If you cannot forgive them, at least forgive yourself – don’t keep your mind continuously distressed and sorrowful by harboring negative feelings because by doing so, you are punishing yourself for someone else’s mistakes.
7. Recognize the importance of a positive attitude. We can suffer from hell even amidst heavenly circumstances, if we have a negative attitude; likewise we can enjoy heaven even amidst hellish circumstances, if we have a positive attitude. The best approach towards past is to learn and move on. This applies to both negative as well as positive past, because by getting stuck to negative past, we loose our peace, happiness and positivity, thus making our-self both emotionally as well mentally crippled; likewise by getting stuck to positive past, we loose our inner drive and motivation for further self-improvement and success. So, learn from the past, both negative as well as positive past, and move on in life. And the best approach towards future is to recognize that future is always unknown for every person. One cannot predict with 100% accuracy even what one will do in next 1 hour. But, despite future being unknown, it is ultimately shaped by our own thinking and action. So, if we keep a negative attitude towards future, future will have more chance to actually become negative; likewise if we keep a positive attitude towards future, future will have more chance to actually become positive. So, always keep a positive attitude towards future, irrespective of past experiences and present circumstances – this is what wise people should do.
8. Lead a life of selfless service - selflessly helping others will generate happiness in you and your life will take a new meaning and direction, away from your negative past and towards a fulfilling present and future. You know now, how painful it is being left hopeless and helpless. There are many people in this world, who are hopeless and helpless sometimes due to their own faults and sometimes due to outer circumstances. How nice it would be, if you would focus your attention on helping such people rather than on continuously feeling distressed yourself. You are fully needed by this world, as long as you can bring a little joy and peace to even one person for even few moments. Recognize the importance of your life and utilize it in selfless service to your fellow humans (and other beings). As per law of the world, what we give to others, is bound to come back to us. So, by giving others comfort, comfort is bound to come to us; by giving others peace, peace is bound to come to us; by giving others love, love  is bound to come to us; by giving others joy, joy is bound to come to us.

Important discussion on brahmacharya (celibacy)

Question.1. Your first question was related to this point “Natural frequency of loss of reproductive elements for both males and females is once a month. More than that will do damage to the body and mind unless some extra diet is taken. Even extra diet will not solve the problem fully, as body and mind invariably becomes weak for next 1-2 days due to low level of pranic energy as a result of intentional loss of reproductive elements.” The first question you raised on this point is: ‘I prefer the term “discharge” or “emission”, not “loss”. Nothing is lost as it is replenished.’

Yes, but nature replenishes things at a particular rate, which cannot be accelerated to an infinite degree. Now, my point was: nature’s mechanism is generation of reproductive elements enough for once a month. Vedas and even thinkers like Socrate advised householders to avoid breaking brahmacharya more than once a month. If males do not keep their mind excited with lustful textual and visual material, the natural/unintentional loss of reproductive elements will not be more than once a month in general. Now, consider two situations:

Situation 1. Person A breaks celibacy everyday.
Situation 2. Person B does not break celibacy intentionally and has an unintentional discharge once a month.

Clearly, person A has been losing much more vital elements than person B. Left to nature, person B has an unintentional discharge once a month. Left to him/herself, person A is losing vital elements everyday. Now, this can only mean that person A is forcing his/her body to generate more vital elements in the body by losing it on daily basis. So, how is that natural? It is like a person who loves the experience of eating so much that he eats, then vomits so that he can eat again and then again eats and vomits. Definitely, human body can be abused like that in all matters including eating and other pleasure-experiences, but that would be forcing the body against its natural order and will bring unpleasant results in the long run.

Question 2. On this point that natural frequency of loss of reproductive elements is once a month, you also asked, “What is the evidence behind the claim on male natural frequency?” Now, what is the evidence that headache exists? Has anyone ever seen it? If one has a headache, can one show it to others or can some scientist prove the existence of headache and the pain associated in a laboratory? No. The fact is that scientific facts are not only established on the basis of laboratory experiments, but also on the commonalities found in the general analysis of the data – this is the basis on which many laws of economics, medical sciences and many more realms of science operate. If we do the general analysis of the data, we find that on-an-average the unintentional loss of reproductive elements in males happens once a month. Based on this data, we can conclude that the natural frequency is once a month, just like we conclude the natural frequency of meals is 3-4 meals a day based on the general analysis of data.

Question 3. On point 3 “Due to reason 2, parent should maintain celibacy for at least 2-3 months before conceiving the child, otherwise their reproductive elements will have a low-level of vital/pranic energy and as a result, their child will not be that intellectually and spiritually developed. If they maintain celibacy for more duration, that will be even better. Also, child should be conceived only when both the parents have crossed the age of 25 (below that age neither the body nor the mind is mature enough to undertake serious and extremely important responsibilities of parenthood) and both parents have a peaceful and positive state of mind for at least last 30 days. Conceiving the child with a tense and negative state of mind reduces the quality of child a lot as these negativities release poisonous elements in our blood-stream and they hurt all our cells (including reproductive elements in the body).”, you raised this question: “Evidence? Even if all that is said before this is true, what is the evidence that the child will not be “intellectually and spiritually developed”? Did Dalai Lama or Albert Einstein’s parents follow this method that you prescribe? Isn’t this just a meeting of two DNAs, which is unaltered by stress, frequent sex, and negative feelings? If you say that frequent sex leads to low sperm count, I can believe that. However, if a child is conceived of parents who have sex more frequently than once a month, I do not believe that the child is of inferior quality.”

DNA is not unaltered by stress and other physical and mental conditions.
Ref: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968,00.html

• Bygren and other scientists have now amassed historical evidence suggesting that powerful environmental conditions (near death from starvation, for instance) can somehow leave an imprint on the genetic material in eggs and sperm. These genetic imprints can short-circuit evolution and pass along new traits in a single generation.
• For instance, Bygren’s research showed that in Overkalix, boys who enjoyed those rare overabundant winters — kids who went from normal eating to gluttony in a single season — produced sons and grandsons who lived shorter lives. Far shorter: in the first paper Bygren wrote about Norrbotten, which was published in 2001 in the Dutch journal Acta Biotheoretica, he showed that the grandsons of Overkalix boys who had overeaten died an average of six years earlier than the grandsons of those who had endured a poor harvest. Once Bygren and his team controlled for certain socioeconomic variations, the difference in longevity jumped to an astonishing 32 years. Later papers using different Norrbotten cohorts also found significant drops in life span and discovered that they applied along the female line as well, meaning that the daughters and granddaughters of girls who had gone from normal to gluttonous diets also lived shorter lives. To put it simply, the data suggested that a single winter of overeating as a youngster could initiate a biological chain of events that would lead one’s grandchildren to die decades earlier than their peers did. How could this be possible?

There is a whole new branch called Epigenetics which is studying how DNA expressions can change. The latest research in this field states: ” there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism; instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism’s genes to behave (or “express themselves”) differently.”

DNA changes can happen through other mechanisms also like (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA#Damage):

• DNA can be damaged by many sorts of mutagens, which change the DNA sequence. Mutagens include oxidizing agents, alkylating agents and also high-energy electromagnetic radiation such as ultraviolet light and X-rays. The type of DNA damage produced depends on the type of mutagen. For example, UV light can damage DNA by producing thymine dimers, which are cross-links between pyrimidine bases.^[60] On the other hand, oxidants such as free radicals or hydrogen peroxide produce multiple forms of damage, including base modifications, particularly of guanosine, and double-strand breaks.^[61] A typical human cell contains about 150,000 bases that have suffered oxidative damage.^[62] Of these oxidative lesions, the most dangerous are double-strand breaks, as these are difficult to repair and can produce point mutations, insertions and deletions from the DNA sequence, as well aschromosomal translocations.^[63]

If eating behaviour of parents during pregnancy period can influence the offspring’ physical strength leading to shorter lives as researched by Bygren and other scientists, why should it be so far-fetched to accept that mental behaviour of parents during the pregnancy period also influences offspring’s physical and mental strength? Mind influences the body and hence, the mental conditions of mothers will have a huge impact on the child.

I do not know how you formed this notion that mother’s mental health has nothing to do with offspring’s health and mind when there are hundreds of researches done that all these things have a big impact on the offspring.
Ref: http://www.marchofdimes.com/printableArticles/681_1158.asp

• ref: http://www.marchofdimes.com/printableArticles/681_1158.asp Studies suggest that babies of women who suffer from high levels of stress and anxiety are more likely to be born low birthweight even when born at full term. Some stress-related hormones (such as norepinephrine) may constrict blood flow to the placenta, so the baby may not receive the nutrients and oxygen it needs for optimal growth.
• ref: http://vip-pregnancy.blogspot.com/2010/06/stress-during-pregnancy-can-affect-baby.html – In 2004, in effect, a group of Canadian researchers published the results of a study initiated in 1998, following an ice storm in Quebec. This natural disaster exposed a large number of pregnant women to a high stress, and the researchers could track such pregnancies and the subsequent development of children up to 2 years of age. This found that the more severe was the level of prenatal stress, the lower the development of intellectual and language skills of children at 2 years, especially if stress exposure had occurred in the early stages of pregnancy.

The only thing you may question is how brahmacharya during pregnancy is useful for the offspring’s health. If parents eating too much can make the life shorter for the offspring as researched by Bygren and his team, then why not depleting one’s precious elements through loss of brahmacharya will hurt the offspring. After all, reproductive elements contain lots of vital elements calcium and phosphorus, also in lecithin, cholesterol, albumen, nucleoproteins, iron, vitamin E, etc. (lecithin which is considered a brain-food and is a very important nutrient for development for our nervous system and brain).

Now, did the parents of brilliant people like Einstein, Newton, etc followed this rule? There is no evidence at all to say whether they followed the rule or violated. We simply do not know. Now, in India, our sages wrote down these rules. They must have done some research on this. There is enough reasoning I gave above showing that for the embryo’s brain and nervous system to develop properly, nutrients like lecithin, nucleoproteins, etc in mother’s body should be preserved during pregnancy period by practice of brahmacharya.

Question 4. Loss of energy is not a problem because then everything we do requires loss of energy like eating, work, physical exercises, etc. So, why expending energy in breaking brahmacharya should be considered anything different from doing so in physical exercises? Why can one not consider breaking brahmacharya as sort of physical exercises which will induce same benefits to oneself as one gets through physical exercises even if one loses some energy in the process? 

This is indeed a very strong line of reasoning. This is the reasoning which many intellectuals have been using recently to promote breaking brahmacharya as very good for physical health like physical exercises. One thing that should be accepted without any problem is that physical exercises need expenditure of some energy in the process, but gives us numerous health benefits by making our lungs, heart, digestive and blood circulation system healthy in the long run and makes our mind fresh.

But, do we find the same benefits in breaking brahmacharya? To answer this we need to understand that there is a very huge difference between muscular energy expended in physical exercises and the most important vital energy which has power to bring forth a new human. Expending the muscular energy for gaining long-term physical health and expending mental energy in our work is different than losing vital energy through break of brahmacharya. Because, what we get is just momentary sensations and end up feeling drained in both body and mind. Building up good muscles takes just few months/years’ efforts, but building up a good intellectual ability takes more than a decade’ efforts. So, replenishing muscular energy is much easier than replenishing mental energy. Sex energy is actually mental energy put into the direction of momentary pleasure. The best reasoning to support this is the scientific fact that lecithin, cholesterol, phosphorus and other constituents of nervous and brain tissue are the main constituents of reproductive elements as well. The loss of these valuable nerve-nourishing substances, by promoting undernutrition, is responsible for the disturbed functioning of the nervous system and brain. If one avoids breaking brahmacharya, then the same nutrients get used up in improving the mental powers because the same nutrients which could have been lost in momentary sensations of lust, are now available for creating new cells of brain and nervous system. So, sex energy cannot be equated with muscular energy.

Hence, physical exercises are different than loss of brahmacharya and hence, brahmacharya should be preserved as much as possible (with possible exceptions for producing offspring).

Question 5. If brahmacharya is so important for mental powers, then how come Western society produce so many intellectual giants?

Before I answer this question, this is a short description of Cēterīs paribus principle

• Cēterīs paribus is a Latin phrase, literally translated as “with other things the same,” or “all other things being equal or held constant.” A prediction, or a statement about causal or logical connections between two states of affairs, is qualified by ceteris paribusin order to acknowledge, and to rule out, the possibility of other factors that could override the relationship between the antecedentand the consequent.

Mental powers depend not just on celibacy, but also on factors like (1) self-motivation, (2) exercising the brain rigorously like a good thinker, (3) concentration power, (4) persistence in sticking to the problem-solving efforts for a long time, (5) living in a peaceful and intellectually stimulating environment and (6) healthy diet. Ceteris paribus (other things remaining the same), celibacy will lead to a higher level of mental powers. So, according to “Ceteris paribus” principle, an Einstein can compare the benefits of celibacy only with himself. I can compare the benefits of celibacy only with myself because other factors (like self-motivation, exercising the brain rigorously like a good thinker, concentration power, persistence in sticking to the problem-solving efforts for a long time,, living in a peaceful and intellectually stimulating environment and healthy diet) do not allow for the possibility for interpersonal comparison. And then, of course, everyone has different domains of work. How can one compare the genius of A. R. Rehman with the genius of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam? Or, for that matter, the genius of Sachin Tendulkar with the genius of Amir Khan. For example, I will be working in social and political field fulltime, so the benefits of brahmacharya should be definitely judged by others in my case based on how many people’s lives I am able to touch through my thoughts, words and deeds in my public life and I will definitely approve of such judgement.

There have been people like Tesla, Newton and many more people who practised celibacy. Napolean Hill who wrote a book “Think and grow rich” was assigned this task by none other than Andrew Carnegie and interviewed thousands of most creative geniuses of his time like Edison, Carnegie, Ford, etc. He included various principles of becoming successful in life by doing case-studies of these geniuses for 20 years (yes sir, it was actually 20 years’ effort before that book was written). And he included one whole chapter in his book titled “Sex sublimation” where he stressed the fact that without sublimating sex energy, one cannot grow to full intellectual potential. He cited examples that geniuses realize the importance of celibacy in 20s and 30s and start being more firm in the practice of celibacy from 30s and start growing amazingly in their career. He gave the example of Henry Ford whose success story began in early 40s. That book was authorized by no one less than Andrew Carnegie (who was the richest industrialist of his time) and he himself supported every principle enunciated in that book as he was the official mentor of Napolean Hill for that book-project.

Based on these reasoning, it is fair to conclude that many geniuses practise celibacy to a great extent and that one can easily find the benefits of celibacy through personal experiments. Just practise full physical and mental celibacy for 1 year and then compare the level of your achievements with the previous year – you will yourself understand whether brahmacharya/celibacy helps in developing mental powers or not. Like a person of scientific temperament, first experiment, then analyse and only then conclude anything. Enough practical tips have been given in my post “Greatly inspiring brahmacharya quotes” to enable anyone to practise brahmacharya for as long as one genuinely wills.

Quotes by Osho

1. Sex makes man a fool.Truth is that sex makes man a fool, gives him the idea that he is the master of it, while he is only a slave. And the slavery has to be broken — he has to be pulled out of this ditch. But if he thinks that that ditch is a palace then you cannot pull him out. You cannot even persuade him to come out of it; hence, the condemnation of sex by all the religions.But they overdid it, and they forgot the ninety-nine percent dangers just for the one percent. It could have been done very easily without taking the risk of ninety-nine percent falsehood. But they saw the danger of man being simply a means, and that is the lowliest position possible; you are just a means, not an end. You are being used by some unknown force of which you have no idea.The man living on the instinctive level only has an hallucination of love. That hallucination is created by nature, by biology, chemistry. You have in your body drugs which are released when you are making love, and you start moving into euphoria. That is one of the reasons why people who become addicted to drugs slowly slowly become uninterested in sex.
   People become addicted to sex. And a very strange thing about addiction is that if you have the drug, it is nothing; if you don’t have it, you are missing. You never think what you are missing because when you have it, it is nothing.. Each time you have it you feel that it is just a futile effort, nothing comes out of it. You don’t move a single inch in evolution. You just jump for a moment in the air and with a thump you fall back on the ground.
2. Desires never fulfill anyone. Buddha has said it is not the nature of desire to be fulfilled. Fulfillment comes only by desirelessness. Now, this is one of the most important paradoxes — if you drop desiring, you will be fulfilled. The more you desire, the more you are getting into desire, the farther and farther away you go from your possibility of fulfillment. One desire creates many more desires… then many more desires, millions more. It is like a tree. First it is one, then many branches, then many small offshoots, and on and on it goes. The person has asked, I FEEL STUCK….
   Everybody who has been living in desire feels stuck. The problem is that if you don’t try to fulfill your desire, you remain unfulfilled. If you try, even if you get the goal of your desire, then you remain unfulfilled — then too, nothing changes. This is the nightmare of life.
3. Osho on Repressed Sexuality. And my own observation is, the moment you accept something totally, the very acceptance brings a revolution, a radical change. It is your energy — accept it. It will make you stronger. Reject it, it keeps you weak. Fighting with your own energy is dissipating it. And fighting with your sex will take so much of your time and so much of your energy — then when are you going to look at God who is knocking on your door?Old age is the last opportunity given to you: before death comes, prepare. And how does one prepare for death? By becoming more meditative.If some lurking desires are still there, and the body is getting old and the body is not capable of fulfilling those desires, don’t be worried. Meditate over those desires, watch, be aware. Just by being aware and watchful and alert, those desires and the energy contained in them can be transmuted. But before death comes, be free of all desires. When I say be free of all desires I simply mean be free of all objects of desires. Then there is a pure longing. That pure longing is divine, that pure longing is God. Then there is pure creativity with no object, with no address, with no direction, with no destination — just pure energy, a pool of energy, going nowhere. That’s what buddhahood is.
4. Sex keeps you unconscious. I don’t call sex a sin, I simply call it stupid. I am not saying that you will suffer hell – what more hell do you need to suffer? You are already suffering in it. And what does it go on giving to you? It just keeps you engaged – engaged in the other so that you can avoid yourself. That is its basic stupidity: it keeps you ignorant because it keeps you ignoring yourself.
   It is as if you are standing on the road and I am sitting on the treetop. I say to you, ”A bullock cart is coming down the road.” You say, ”I don’t see any bullock cart. There is no bullock cart.” But I can see; my perspective is greater because I am on a height. You will only see the bullock cart when it comes very close to you, and then after a few yards it will disappear again. And I will say to you, ”It has not disappeared. It is still there on the road.” You will say, ”It is no longer there, it is gone.”
   The higher you rise, the more you can see. And when you reach the ultimate height, Buddhahood, you can see everything. Then there is no past and no future; then there is only present. And in that clarity, sex is the most stupid thing because it keeps you in bondage the longest. I am not condemning it, I am simply stating a fact. It is your bondage. It keeps you unconscious. It does not allow you to see what you are doing. You are possessed by it.
   That’s why I call it stupid: it keeps you unconscious, it keeps you in a kind of possession. It is hormonal, it is chemical. It is not you; it is just your biology that goes on forcing you to do certain things. If you watch, you will be surprised: What are you doing? And why are you doing? If you watch you will be surprised: What are you gaining out of it? What have you gained up to now? And in your saner moments you know perfectly well what I am saying, you understand it; but those saner moments are very superficial – they come and go – and soon you are back in the same trap again.
5. Osho – Transforming Lust with Awareness gives indescribable Bliss. Passion creates many things in you. It creates fever, it makes you more unconscious — more unconscious than you already are. It drags you deeper into the mud. And with passion come hatred, illusion and desire — and then you are distracted from your nature. Your nature is poisoned, your innocence is poisoned. You lose all simplicity, all humbleness.
   Beware of the poisoning by passion. Be warm, be loving — that is a totally different phenomenon — but don’t be full of lust. Warmth is possible with your consciousness. A Buddha is very warm, a Jesus is very warm, very loving. Passion has disappeared. Passion has become transformed into compassion. Their compassion showers on you like flowers. Just as passion poisons you, compassion purifies you. Compassion is nectar if passion is poison. The energy that is involved in passion can be released into compassion.Try, when you are angry, to be conscious, and you will be surprised — you are in for a great surprise. If you become conscious, anger disappears. And suddenly you have found a key, you have stumbled upon a secret. When sex dominates you and you are full of lust, close your eyes, sit silently and meditate on this energy that is surrounding you, this lust that is surrounding you like a cloud. Just watch it, see it.I am not saying be against it, because if you are against it you have already taken a standpoint. Now you cannot watch.For watching, the necessary step, the most necessary, is not to take any prejudice, not to conclude beforehand. Just remain silently watchful, neither for nor against. And within minutes you will be surprised that that great storm of lust is over. And when the storm is over, the silence that is left behind is so profound, is so great, such a blessing that you may not have felt it ever. No sexual experience can give you that beauty that will come if you watch your lust and through watchfulness the lust disappears. Then a silence comes to you which is virgin, which belongs to the beyond, which belongs to the other shore.
6. Osho – Repression of any kind is destructive to body, to the mind, to the soul. Repression of any kind is destructive to the body, to the mind, to the soul. Energies have to be transformed, not repressed. Energies are your potential wealth, raw; you have to polish them, then they can become great diamonds. These same energies, sexual energies, can become your spiritual liberation. Repressed you will be in a bondage.
   I am not saying to become indulgent; that is going to the other extreme. Buddha will also not support your indulgence. He is absolutely for the middle way, the golden mean. Neither be repressive nor be indulgent. Be watchful, be alert; be friendly to your energies, sympathetic. They are your energies; don’t create a rift, otherwise you will always be in conflict, and to fight with your own energies is an unnecessary dissipation. Fighting with your own energies, you are fighting with yourself: you cannot win. You will be simply wasting the whole opportunity of life. Be aware, don’t repress, don’t indulge. Be aware, be natural. Let energies be accepted and absorbed, and then the same energies, crude energies, become so refined, passing through awareness, that great flowers bloom in your being — lotuses of enlightenment.
7. Osho – Sleepy person knows only a few sensations of the body food, sex. Question – Beloved Master, What is Happiness?
   Osho – Jayananda, it depends. It depends on you, on your state of consciousness or unconsciousness, whether you are asleep or awake. There is one famous maxim of Murphy. He says there are two types of people: One, who always divide humanity in two types, and the other, who don’t divide humanity at all. I belong to the first type…. Humanity can be divided in two types: the sleeping ones and the awakened ones — and, of course, a small part in between.Happiness will depend on where you are in your consciousness. If you are asleep, then pleasure is happiness. Pleasure means sensation, trying to achieve something through the body which is not possible to achieve through the body, forcing the body to achieve something it is not capable of. People are trying, in every possible way, to achieve happiness through the body.
   The body can give you only momentary pleasures, and each pleasure is balanced by pain in the same amount, in the same degree. Each pleasure is followed by its opposite because body exists in the world of duality, just as the day is followed by night and death is followed by life and life is followed by death. It is a vicious circle. Your pleasure will be followed by pain, your pain will be followed by pleasure.But you will never be at ease. When you will be in a state of pleasure you will be afraid that you are going to lose it, and that fear will poison it. And when you will be lost in pain, of course, you will be in suffering, and you will try every possible effort to get out of it — just to fall again back into it. Buddha calls this the wheel of birth and death. We go on moving in this wheel, clinging to the wheel… and the wheel moves on. Sometimes pleasure comes up and sometimes pain comes up, but we are crushed between these two rocks.But the sleepy person knows nothing else. He knows only a few sensations of the body — food, sex. This is his world; he goes on moving between these two.These are the two ends of his body: food and sex. If he represses sex he becomes addicted to food: if he represses food he becomes addicted to sex. Energy goes on moving like a pendulum. And whatsoever you call pleasure is, at the most, just a relief of a tense state. Sexual energy gathers, accumulates; you become tense and heavy and you want to release it.The man who is asleep, his sexuality is nothing but a relief, like a good sneeze. It gives you nothing but a certain relief. A tension was there, now it is no more there; but it will accumulate again. Food gives you only a little taste on the tongue; it is not much to live for. But many people are living only to eat; there are very few people who eat to live.The story of Columbus is well-known. It was a long trip. For three months they saw nothing but water. Then one day Columbus looked out at the horizon and saw trees. And if you think Columbus was happy to see trees, you should have seen his dog! That’s why the Siberian dogs are the fastest in the world: because the trees are so far apart. But this is the world of pleasure. The dog can be forgiven, but you cannot be forgiven.It depends on people what can be called happiness. To the sleeping, pleasurable sensations are happiness. He lives from one pleasure to another pleasure. He is just rushing from one sensation to another sensation. He lives for small thrills. His life is very superficial; it has no depth, it has no quality. He lives in the world of quantity.Then the people who are in between, who are neither asleep nor awake, who are just in a limbo, a little bit asleep, a little bit awake. You sometimes have that experience in the early morning: still sleepy, but you can’t say you are asleep because you can hear the noise in the house, your wife preparing tea, the noise of the samovar or the milkman at the door or children getting ready to go to school. You can hear these things, but still you are not awake. Vaguely, dimly these noises reach to you, as if there is a great distance between you and all that is happening around you.
   It feels as if it is still a part of the dream. It is not a part of the dream, but you are in a state of in-between. The same happens when you start meditating. The nonmeditator sleeps, dreams; the meditator starts moving away from his sleep towards awakening. He is in a transitory state. Then happiness has a totally different meaning: it becomes more of a quality, less of a quantity; it is more psychological, less physiological.He enjoys music more, he enjoys poetry more, he enjoys creating something. He enjoys nature, its beauty. He enjoys silence. He enjoys what he had never enjoyed before, and this is far more lasting. Even if the music stops, something goes on lingering in you. And it is not a relief.The difference between pleasure and THIS happiness is: it is not a relief, it is an enrichment. You become more full, you become a little overflowing. Listening to good music, something is triggered in your being, a harmony arises in you — you become musical. Or dancing, suddenly you forget your body; your body becomes weightless. The grip of gravitation over you is lost. Suddenly you are in a different space: the ego is not so solid, the dancer melts and merges into the dance. This is far higher, far deeper than the joy that you gain from food or sex. This has a depth. But this is also not the ultimate. The ultimate happens only when you are fully awake, when you are a buddha, when all sleep is gone and all dreaming is gone, when your whole being is full of light, when there is no darkness within you. All darkness has disappeared and with that darkness, the ego is gone. All tensions have disappeared, all anguish, all anxiety. You are in a state of total contentment. You live in the present; no past, no future anymore. You are utterly here-nowThis moment is all. Now is the only time and here is the only space. And then suddenly the whole sky drops into you. This is bliss. This is REAL happiness. Seek bliss, Jayananda; it is your birthright. Don’t remain lost in the jungle of pleasures; rise a little higher. Reach to happiness and then to bliss.Pleasure is animal, happiness is human, bliss is divine. Pleasure binds you, it is a bondage, it chains you. Happiness gives you a little more rope, a little bit of freedom, but only a little bit. Bliss is absolute freedom. You start moving upwards; it gives you wings. You are no more part of the gross earth; you become part of the sky. You become light, you become joy. Pleasure is dependent on others. Happiness is not so dependent on others, but still it is separate from you. Bliss is not dependent, is not separate either; it is your very being, it is your very nature. To attain it is to attain to God, to nirvana.Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 10″
8. If you have really experienced the inner light, sex will disappear. Love will happen to you, but sex will disappear; sexuality will disappear. Love, a very loving personality, will take its place. There will be no desire for sex. If the desire for sex remains, you have not experienced the inner light. Then the inner light is just a projection of the mind.
9. What happens with your sex energy depends on how you use it. What it can become does not depend on it alone, but on your understanding and on how you live your life. Have you not observed that it becomes brahmacharya, the state of celibacy when it is transformed? bramhacharya is not hostile to passion; brahmacharya is the purification, the transcendence, the sublimation of passion. In the same way, the energy that manifests itself in violence becomes peace, serenity and tranquility. It is only a question of transformation.
10. Love is the creative refinement of sex energy. And so, when love reaches perfection, the absence of sex automatically follows. A life of love, an abstinence from physical pleasures is called brahmacharya, and anyone who wishes to be free from sex must develop his capacity to love. Freedom from sex cannot be achieved through super-session. Liberation from sex is only possible through love.
11. Both are easy: it is perfectly easy to go unconscious in sex, to completely forget what is going on, to get intoxicated is easy. To control sex, to force it to stop, to prevent yourself is also easy. But in both you miss. The one who indulges misses, the celibate misses too. The real brahmacharya happens when you stand in the middle between these two, then you are only watching. Then you will find that sex arises in the body and reverberates in the body; in the mind a shadow briefly falls and departs. You remain standing far away. How can sexual desire be in you? How can any desire be in you? You are nothing but the observer.
12. Sex is there: do not condemn it. Accept it. Do not create a division in your being, between parts of your being. Anger is there: accept it. Greed is there, or whatsoever: accept it. I do not mean be greedy. Rather on the contrary, the moment you accept you go beyond, because acceptance creates a unity, and when you are united within you have the energy to go beyond.
13. The mechanism of sex is so much a momentary phenomenon that it only functions momentarily; if you do not cooperate at the right moment, it stops. At the right moment your cooperation is needed, otherwise it cannot work. It is only a momentary mechanism, and if you do not cooperate with it, it will stop by itself.
14. First the energy will try its best to be released sexually, because that is its usual outlet, its usual center. So one must first be aware of one’s downward “doors.” Only awareness will close them; only noncooperation will close them. Sex is not so forceful as we feel it to be. It is forceful only momentarily: it is not a twenty-four-hour affair, it is a momentary challenge.
15. Real awareness always leads you beyond sex, and celibacy happens on its own accord. Because to be in sex you have either to be identified with the male or identified with the female. A real celibate is one who has gone beyond, who is neither.
16. Remember, to translate BRAHMACHARYA as “celibacy” is not right. The word BRAHMACHARYA simply means living like a god, living with the experience of the Brahma, the absolute, living meditatively. If I am to translate BRAHMACHARYA I Will translate it as “the life of meditation”.
17. Meditation brings a kind of celibacy, but not vice versa. A celibacy without meditation is nothing but sexual repression. And your mind will become more and more sexual, so whenever you sit to meditate your mind will become full of fantasies, sexual fantasies.
18. When you become violent, non-violence comes in. When you become non-violent, violence waits behind. They go together. All dualities go together. When sex disappears, celibacy disappears too — remember it. If you start claiming that you have become a celibate then sexuality still exists, and any day it can explode. You are sitting on a volcano. When sex has gone what is the meaning of celibacy? Then it is simply meaningless, the word is meaningless. ‘Celibacy’ can carry any meaning only in reference to sex. Buddha says: When both dualities are gone you are simply in the middle — silent, calm, pure. The Way is attained. The Way is the middle Way.
19. Celibacy should be brought very slowly. All that brings you again and again to sexuality has to be dropped slowly, in steps. And once you start enjoying the energy that becomes available, when you are not obsessed with sex, just that pure energy becomes a dance in you — that is called enriching. Now, your energy is not wasted. Your energy goes on showering on yourself. Remember, there are two types of celibates. One: who has simply forced celibacy upon himself — he is a wrong type, he is doing violence to himself. The other: who has tried to understand sexuality, what it is, why it is; who has watched, observed, lived through it, and, by and by, has become aware of its futility; by and by, has become aware of a deep frustration that comes after EACH sexual act.
20. Kabir says: Repression is not BRAHMACHARYA. Repressing your desires and destroying your desires is not the way of celibacy, because if you repress your desires you will remain hung-up with them. Whatsoever is repressed, you have to repress it again and again and again, and whatsoever is repressed, you have to sit on it continuously; otherwise there is fear — if you move somewhere else, it may bubble up again. Repression can never bring freedom. Repression makes you a slave. Repress anything, and that will become your master.
21. Love has its own meditation. But you do not know love; you know only sex and you know the misery of wasting energy. Then you get depressed after it. Then you decide to take a vow of BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy. And this vow is taken in depression, this vow is taken in anger, this vow is taken in frustration. It is not going to help. A vow can be helpful if taken in a very relaxed, deeply meditative mood. Otherwise you are simply showing your anger, your frustration and nothing else, and you will forget the vow within twenty-four hours. The energy will have come again, and just as an old routine you will have to release it.
22. Brahmacharya cannot be taught. Only meditation can be taught. Brahmacharya is the result. As meditation ripens, brahmacharya comes to fruit by itself. All effort is to be put into meditation. One who puts his effort directly into brahmacharya will sit suppressing sex in the name of brahmacharya. And brahmacharya is not happening – it is only superficial – within the being the worms of desire are crawling.
23. Lust means how to use something for your happiness; love means your happiness is not at all concerned. Really, lust means how to get something out of it and love means how to give something. They are diametrically opposite. If you see a beautiful face and you feel love toward the face, the immediate feeling in your consciousness will be how to do something to make this face happy, how to do something to make this man or this woman happy. The concern is not with yourself, the concern is with the other.In love the other is important; in lust you are important. In lust you are thinking how to make the other your instrument; in love you are thinking how to become an instrument yourself. In lust you are going to sacrifice the other; in love you are going to sacrifice yourself. Love means giving; lust means getting. Love is a surrender; lust is an aggression.
24. I am not against sex, but I am against sexuality. And let me make a distinction: when you feeling very sexual and being possessed by the person, this is not the moment to do anything. Close your doors, meditate on your sexuality. Let it arise, let it come out of the dark night within you. Out of the jungle, let it spread — you watch, you simply watch, you become an unmoving flame of awareness. Soon you will see it has settled again, and your consciousness is burning brighter than ever. You have absorbed it, it has become nectar.
25. To me, if sex is the creative force in the world, it must be nearest to the creative center of the world — whatever name you give to it. Creative energy must be closest to creation, to the creative source of it all. People should be taught the art of converting sexual energy into spiritual enlightenment.
26. In the sexual act you have a certain thrill, a moment of forgetfulness, a moment of oblivion. You feel good — for a few seconds, only for a few seconds, you drop out of this routine world. Sex gives you a door to escape into some other world — which is non-tense; there is no worry; you are simply relaxed and melting. But have you observed? After each sexual act you feel frustrated. Sex creates neurosis, it is neurotic, because it can never satisfy you. Now, go to the madhouses of the world and just watch the mad people, and you will always find that somewhere or other there is a sexual problem. That’s what Freud says, that ALL pathology is somehow connected with sex. Too much sex obsession becomes neurotic. If you live in the body, you are bound to become neurotic. You have to go a little deeper and higher than the body.
27. In sex there may be relaxation. In sex there may be physiological health and hygiene. But there is no growth. You remain animal. With love you become human. With love you become upright. With love you stand erect on earth. With sex you are again animal, you are horizontal on the earth, just moving like other animals, crawling. With love you are erect, vertical.
28. Awareness is the true path. Neither indulge nor renounce, but be aware. Do whatsoever you are doing — do it with full awareness.
29. Friendship is the highest form of love and sex is the lowest form of love.
30. The thirtieth year is perfectly the right time. That leaves you — because you are from the West — at least fifty to sixty years to work upon yourself, to find yourself, and to find the innermost mysteries of existence. In fact, now begins the real life; up to now you were a slave. Now, boundaries are dropping and the whole sky is becoming available to you with all its stars. Don’t be an old fool. And if you can become wise while you are young, just thirty, thank God. Be grateful to existence that he is allowing you so much time to explore much that is not available to any other animal, which is only available to man. And the more time you have to explore it, the deeper will be your insight, the greater will be your consciousness and tremendous will be your splendor. You will not die an ugly death; you will die with a grace and with a smile on your face.Nityanando, you are fortunate that life need not be empty for you. If sex is going, say goodbye to it. It was good when it was there; it is better when it is gone. Now begins a totally different space of experiencing. Now begins a new adventure, more free, more individual, more unfettered. And the sky is so vast to explore… and on each step there are miracles and miracles.So sing and dance and meditate. And life is immensely beautiful: it has all that Gautam Buddha experienced and more, because twenty-five centuries have passed; man has become far more mature, and evolution has gone higher. We can produce greater Gautam Buddhas with more dimensions to them.
31. And, if you become meditative, you will come to realize a new fact. That fact is that it is not sex that gives you bliss, it is not sex that gives you the ecstasy. Rather, it is a thoughtless state of the mind and total involvement in the act that gives you a blissful feeling.Once you understand this then sex will be needed less and less, because that thoughtless state of mind can be created without it — that’s what meditation means. And that totality of being can be created without sex. Once you know that the same phenomenon can happen without sex, sex will be needed less and less. A moment will come when sex will not be needed at all.Remember, sex is always dependent on the other. So in sex, a bondage, a slavery remains. Once you can create this total orgasmic phenomenon without any dependence on anybody else, when it has become an inner source, you are independent, you are free.That’s what is meant when, in India, we say only a BRAHMACHARI, an absolutely celibate person, can be free — because now he is not dependent on anybody else, his ecstasy is his own.Sex disappears through meditation, but this is not destroying the energy. Energy is never destroyed; only the form of the energy changes. Now it is no longer sexual, and when the form is no longer sexual, then you become loving.So, really, a person who is sexual cannot love. His love can only be a show. His love is just a means towards sex. A person who is sexual uses love just as a technique towards sex. It is a means. A sexual person cannot really love, he can only exploit the other; and love becomes just a way to approach the other.A person who has become non-sexual, and the energy is moving within, has become auto-ecstatic. His ecstasy is his own. Such a person will be loving for the first time. His love will be a constant showering, a constant sharing, a constant giving.
32. Sex has become synonymous with life in the West. It is not; it is only a very small part. It has something tremendously important to contribute but it is not all the story. It is just the beginning. It will be even more correct to say it is just the preface, not even the beginning. But my feeling about you is that you are ready to go into some new space – higher, better, superior, more graceful. And when this conflict with sex disappears and you accept the stage you are in, much love will arise in you. And it will not be sexual love – it will have a different quality: it will be more like friendship, more like prayer, more like creating music, singing a song, looking at the sunset. It will have all those qualities. It will be more aesthetic, less sexual. The sexual love remains a little coloured with violence; it remains a little crude. It can’t be very soft; it can’t have grace and dignity. It is anger; it is our animal heritage.
33. That idea of being a macho will create trouble for you. Drop this machismo, and forget all about it. And there is no problem; you are creating it. Put more and more of your effort into meditation. You will be surprised: the energy that goes into sex will start going into meditation, and sooner or later you will be having the same kind of orgasmic experiences through meditation as people have through sex.The sexual orgasm is bound to take too much energy out of you. It is a sheer wastage. It gives very little and takes very much. In the meditative orgasm, with no energy investment from your side the same quality – deeper, higher, profounder – happens. Later on you will find yourself more energetic than before. The meditative orgasm will leave you with more energy, with more vibrant energy than before. And this is possible.
34. We are weaklings, not because we have less energy than a Buddha: we have the same quanta of energy, everyone is born with the same energy quanta, but we are accustomed to dissipating it. It simply moves away from us and never comes back. It cannot come back! Once it is out of you, it can never come back – it is beyond you.A word arises in me: I speak it out; it has flown away. It is not going to come back to me, and the energy that was used in producing it, that was used in throwing it away, is dissipated. A word arises in me: I don’t throw it out; I remain silent. Then the word moves and moves and moves, and falls into the original source again. The energy has been reconsumed.Silence is energy. Brahmacharya is energy. Not to be angry is energy. But this is not suppression. If you suppress anger, you have used energy again. Don’t suppress – observe and follow. don’t fight – just move backwards with the anger. This is the purest method of awareness.
35. Love is a very silent flow, non-aggressive, almost passive; it is a very silent breeze. Sex is passion, violence, aggression, with force, with strong energy – it attacks. The heart and the sex center can join together, then love becomes passionate. If heart is not joined with the sex center then love becomes compassionate. Then love is there in its total purity and only then, when there is no passion in it, is love pure. It is silent, passive, non-aggressive. You can invite it but it will not knock at your door. It will not even ask to be invited. You can persuade it to come, it can become your guest, but it will not come uninvited.
36. I have watched many people die. It rarely happens that a person dies with God on his mind. Almost always, nine out of ten people die with sex on their minds when they die, and that becomes the beginning of another life. Sex on the mind becomes the beginning of another sex life.But it has to be so if you have not been working hard to go beyond it, to go beyond its grip. If you have not been struggling hard to release yourself from its clutches, then it is going to be so.
37. You know it. If this house is suddenly on fire, you will be more aware. You know that your awareness goes up and down. At certain moments you are more aware; at certain moments, less aware. So it is possible to create the situation of being more aware.That’s why awareness became the basis of meditation. And with awareness came the surprise that as you become aware, thoughts disappear. When you are fully aware, there are no thoughts, and suddenly time has stopped. Time can be there inside only with the movement of thoughts.
38. Witnessing means no choice, choice-less awareness. This is one of the most fundamental keys for all the diseases of the human mind. If you can become a witness, the opposites fight against each other, with each other, and both are dead, both disappear. But if you choose one thing over the other, you cannot be a witness.
39. Unless you know something which cannot be sold and cannot be purchased, unless you know something which is beyond money, you have not known real life. Sex is not beyond money — love is. Transform your sex into love, and transform your love into prayer — so one day even kings like Bimbisara may feel jealous of you. Become a Mahavira, a Buddha, become a Christ, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu. Only then have you lived, only then have you known the mysteries of life!
40. Money and sex are the lowest, and people are living only in the world of money and sex — and they think they are living. They are not living, they are only vegetating, they are only dying. This is not life. Life has many more kingdoms to be revealed, an infinite treasure which is not of this world. Neither sex can give it to you, nor money.
41. The sexual orgasm is very momentary, and whatsoever is momentary brings frustration in its wake, brings misery and unhappiness and sadness and repentance. But the quality of being orgasmic can become a continuity in you, a continuum — it can become your very flavor. But it is possible only through meditation, not through sex.
42. Question – Beloved Master, Why am I Tired of Sex?
    Osho – Sandhan, sex is tiring — and that’s why I say to you: Don’t avoid it. Unless you know its stupidity you will not be able to get rid of it. Unless you know its sheer wastage, you will not be able to transcend it.It is good that you have started feeling tired — that is natural. Sex simply means energy being dissipated downwards. The energy has to move upwards, then it is nourishing. Then it opens inexhaustible treasures in you — aes dhammo sanantano. But if you go on and on into sex like a maniac, soon you will find yourself utterly exhausted, wasted. What is the point of remaining in it if you are feeling tired? Get out of it! And I am not saying repress it. When you are feeling much energy for it and you try to get out, there will be repression. But when you are exhausted and tired and you see the futility of it, you can come out of it without repression. And to come out of sex without repression is to be free of it. Freedom from sex is a great experience. Freedom from sex makes your energies available for meditation, for samadhi.
43. Yes, it has to be transcended one day because this is also a duality — man/woman — the same duality as between positive and negative, birth and death, summer and winter. It has to be transcended. One has to come to a point from where nothing disturbs your coolness, nothing distracts you from your center.But the way to come to it is not repression, Nanda Kishor. The first step is acceptance: it is natural. Accept it as part of your nature, as part of your biology. And then try to understand it, watch it, observe it, witness it. Slowly slowly, as your witnessing will grow, you will go beyond it. One day you will not find any difference between a man and a woman: you have gone beyond sexuality. That is true BRAHMACHARYA, true celibacy, but it is not what has been told to you.
44. When one becomes pure — through nonviolence, non-possessiveness, authenticity — when one becomes more and more pure, the focus of consciousness shifts from the body to the being. The being can remain absolutely alone.The body needs togetherness; and your innermost soul needs aloneness. That is the problem. Your innermost soul can remain alone — it is a Himalayan peak standing alone against the sky. Your innermost soul grows when it is alone, but your body needs relatedness. The body needs crowds, warmth, clubs, societies, organizations; wherever you are with many people the body feels good. In a crowd your soul may feel starved because it feeds on aloneness, but your body feels good. In aloneness your soul feels perfect, but the body starts feeling hungry for relationship.But when somebody has attained to aloneness and the focus of consciousness has changed…. That’s what yoga is all about: how to change the focus from the body to the soul, from matter to nonmatter, from the visible to the invisible, from the known to the unknown — from the world to God. Howsoever you phrase it is immaterial. It is a change of focus. When the focus has completely changed, the yogi is so happy in his aloneness, so blissful, that that ordinary hankering of the body to be with others by and by disappears.When the purity is attained there arises in the yogi a disillusionment for his own body: now he knows that the paradise that he has been seeking cannot be attained through the body, the bliss that he has been dreaming about is not possible through the body. It is impossible for the body: through the limited you are trying to reach the unlimited.Through matter you are trying to reach the eternal, the immortal. Nothing is wrong in the body: your effort is absurd. Don’t be angry with the body; the body has not done anything to you. It is just as if someone is trying to listen through the eyes — now nothing is wrong with the eyes: eyes are made to see, not to listen. The body is made of matter; it is not made of the immaterial. It is made of death. It cannot be immortal. You are asking the impossible. Don’t ask that.That is the point of disillusionment: the yogi simply understands what is possible and what is not possible with the body. That which is possible is okay; that which is not possible he does not ask. He is not angry. He doesn’t hate the body. He takes every care of it because the body can become a ladder; it can become a door, It cannot become the goal, but it can become the door.A disillusionment for his own body — and when this disillusionment happens: “… a disinclination to come in physical contact with others.” Then the need to be in physical contact with others, by and by, withers away. In fact this is the right moment when you can say the man has come out of the womb, not before it.In a yogi this urge to be in relationships disappears — and with this urge, he is really born. We in India have called him “twice-born,” dwij. This is his second birth, the real birth. Now he is no longer in need of anybody; he has become a transcendental light. Now he can float above the earth; now he can fly in the sky. He is not earth-rooted now. He has become a flower — not a flower, because even a flower is earth-rooted… he has become the fragrance of the flower. Completely free. Moves into the sky with no roots in the earth. His desire to come in contact with others’ bodies disappears.
45. I would also like you to go beyond sex, because going beyond sex is a tremendously beautiful experience of freedom – freedom from the body, freedom from that continuous obsession. When sex really disappears, without any repression, when it disappears through meditation, for the first time it gives you the taste of total freedom. You don’t need anybody any more; you are out of the grip of biology.In fact when sex has disappeared you become a man for the first time, because with sex you remain part of the animal world.
46. Question : In the Awakening of the Kundalini, in the opening of the passage, Isn’t there an increase in Sexual Power?Osho : The increase in sexual power and the opening of the kundalini passage are simultaneous – not the same, but simultaneous. The increase in sexual power will be the thrust to open up the higher centers; so sexual power will increase. If you can be aware of it and not use it sexually – if you do not allow it to be released sexually – it will become so intense that the upward movement will begin.First the energy will try its best to be released sexually, because that is its usual outlet, its usual center. So one must first be aware of one’s downward ”doors.” Only awareness will close them; only noncooperation will close them. Sex is not so forceful as we feel it to be. It is forceful only momentarily: it is not a twenty-four-hour affair, it is a momentary challenge.If you can be noncooperative and aware, it goes. And you will feel more happiness than when sexual energy is released from the downward passage. Conservation of energy is always blissful: wastage of energy is only a relief, it is not blissful. You have unburdened yourself; you have alleviated something that was troubling you. Now you have become unburdened, but you have also become emptied.The feeling of emptiness that is overtaking the whole Western mind is just because of sexual wastage. Life seems to be empty. Life is never empty, but it seems to be empty because you have been simply unburdening yourself, just relieving yourself. If something is conserved it becomes a richness: if your upward door is open and energy goes upward, not only do you feel relieved, not only is the straining point relieved, but it is not vacant. In a way it is fulfilled; it is overflowing.The energy has gone upward, but the basic center has not become empty. It is overflowing, and the overflowing energy goes upward, up toward the brahma randhra. Then, near the brahma randhra, there is neither an upward movement nor a downward movement. Now the energy goes to the cosmic: it goes to the all; it goes to the brahman – the ultimate reality. That is why the seventh chakra is known as the brahma randhra – the door to the brahman, the door to the divine.Then there is no ”up” and no ”down.” It will feel like something is penetrating, thrusting upward – and a moment will come when one will feel as though that something is no longer there, that it has gone. Now it is overflowing into the passage. The petals of the sahasrar are just a symbol for the feelings that occur when energy overflows.The overflowing is a flowering, just like a flower itself is an overflowing. You will feel that something has become a flower; the door is open, and it will go outward. It will not be felt inwardly; it will be felt outwardly. Something has opened like a flower, like a flower with a thousand petals. It is just a feeling, but the feeling corresponds to the truth.The feeling is a translation and interpretation. The mind cannot conceive of it, but the feeling is just like a flowering. The closest, the nearest thing that we can say is that it is like a bud opening. It is felt like that. That is why we have conceived of the opening of the sahasrar as a thousand-petaled lotus.So many petals – so many! And they go on opening, they go on opening… the opening is endless. It is a fulfillment; it is a flowering of the human being. Then you become just like a tree, and everything that was in you has flowered. Then all you can do is to offer this flower to the divine. We have been offering flowers, but they are broken flowers. Only this flower can be a real offering.
47. Question : How does one overcome the pull toward Sex so that the Kundalini Can go upward?Osho : Energy has been going downward through the sex center continuously for many births, so when any energy is created it will first try to move downward. That is why meditation sometimes will create more sexuality in you than you have ever felt before. You will feel more sexual because you have generated more energy than you previously had.When you have conserved something, the old, habitual passage is ready to release it. The mechanism is ready, the old passage is ready. Your mind only knows one passage – the lower one, the sexual passage – so when you are meditating the first movement of your life energy will be downward. Just be aware of it.Do not struggle with it; just be aware of it. Be aware of the habitual passage, be aware of sexual images; let them come. Be aware of them, but do not do anything about the situation; just be aware of it. The sexual passage cannot operate without your cooperation, but if you cooperate with it even for a single moment, it can start functioning.So do not cooperate with it: just be aware of it. The mechanism of sex is so much a momentary phenomenon that it only functions momentarily; if you do not cooperate at the right moment, it stops. At the right moment your cooperation is needed, otherwise it cannot work. It is only a momentary mechanism, and if you do not cooperate with it, it will stop by itself.Time and time again, energy is created through meditation. It continues to move downward, but now you are aware of it. The old passage is cut – not suppressed. Energy is there and it needs to be released, but the lower door is closed: not suppressed – closed. You have not cooperated with it, that’s all.You have not positively suppressed it, you have only negatively not cooperated with it. You have just been aware of what is happening to your mind, to your body. You are just aware; then energy is conserved. Then the quantity of the energy becomes more and more intense and an upward thrust becomes necessary. Now the energy will go upward; by its very force, a new passage will be thrown open.When energy goes upward you will be more sexually attractive to others, because life energy going upward creates a great magnetic force. You will become more sexually attractive to others, so you will have to be aware of this. Now you will attract persons unknowingly, and the attraction will not only be physical; the attraction will be etheric.Even a repulsive body, a nonattractive body, will become attractive with yoga. The attraction is etheric; and it is so magnetic that one has to be constantly aware of it, constantly aware. You will be attractive… and the opposite sex will be irresistably drawn to you. There are subtle vibrations that are created by your etheric body: you have to be aware of them.The type of attraction that will be felt by the opposite sex will differ – it will take so many different forms – but basically it will be sexual. At its root, it will be sexual. But you can help these people. Even if they are attracted to you sexually, they have become attracted to a sexual energy that is moving upward. And they too are not ordinary sexual beings: upwardmoving sexual energy has become an attraction, a magnet. So you can help them; if you do not become involved, then you can help them.
48. In sex, meditation happens. A moment comes when you are reaching the climax, a moment comes just before ejaculation or orgasm when mind stops. You become pure energy, bioenergy, just a stream of energy, no-mind. No-mind is meditation. But if you become stuck just in sexual meditation you will not grow. Nothing is wrong in it, but you have to grow beyond it because this sexual meditation depends on the other and anything that depends on the other cannot make you ultimately free; you will remain dependent. Right meditation means a moment where mind ceases, you have become one energy – but not moving towards the other, not moving in any direction, but simply remaining in yourself. That will become samadhi. Meditation moving towards the other becomes a sexual act; meditation moving nowhere, remaining inside, becomes samadhi.
49. Since every male has a female body within him and every female has a male body within her, if by coincidence a woman gets a husband who is identical with the male body within her, or if a man marries a woman who is identical with the female body within him, then only is a marriage successful; otherwise not. This is why ninety-nine percent of marriages are failures: because the intrinsic rule of success is not known yet. As long as we are unable to ascertain the right alliance between the respective energy bodies of two persons, marriages are bound to remain a failure no matter what steps we take in other directions. Successful marriages can only be possible if absolutely clear scientific details concerning these various inner bodies are achieved. A boy or a girl who has reached up to the point of the awakening of the kundalini finds it very easy to choose the right partner in life. With the full knowledge of all his bodies within, one can make the right choice outwardly. Prior to this it is very difficult. Therefore, those who knew insisted that the child should be made to develop his first four bodies in the first twenty-five years by maintaining brahmacharya, and then only could he marry – because whom should he marry? With whom does he want to spend the rest of his life? Whom is he seeking? What man does a woman seek? She seeks the man within her. If by coincidence the right connections are made, then both the man and woman are satisfied; otherwise, dissatisfaction remains and a thousand perversions result from this. The man then goes to a prostitute or seeks the woman next door. His distress grows day by day, and this misery is bound to increase with the growth of man’s intellect.
50. Love is the happiness of the other; sex is happiness of your own, the other has to be used. In love the other’s happiness has become even more significant than your own. Lovers are each other’s servants, sex partners are each other’s exploiters.
51. Sex is horizontal. When you are totally aware, sex becomes vertical. And that vertical movement of sex is kundalini. If sex moves horizontally, then you go on reproducing others and reproducing yourself. If the energy begins to move upward, vertically, you just go out – out of the wheel of Existence: as the Buddhists say, out of the wheel of life. This is a new birth – not in a new body, but in a new dimension of Existence. This Buddhists have called Nirvana. You can call it MOKSHA – liberation – or whatsoever you like to call it.
52. Buddha is not lacking anything. Rather, on the contrary, something new has come to his life. It is not that he has no sex hormones. They are there. So what has happened to him? His consciousness has deepened, and his consciousness has entered even into the sex cells. Now the sex cells are there, but they cannot behave independently. Unless the center orders them to act, they cannot act. They will remain inactive. In an impotent person sex cells are not. In a Buddha they are there and more strong than in an ordinary person – stronger, because never used, not used. Energy is accumulated in them, they are bubbling with energy, but consciousness has penetrated into the cells now. Now the consciousness is not only a starting point: it has become the master.
53. If you become conscious, you will lose your sexual desire and lust. If you become conscious, then there will be no sexual desire inside.
54. It happens, when you are on a fast, that your sex desire will die, because now a more foundational thing is at stake. Food is for your survival, sex is for the survival of your race. It is a distant phenomenon, not related with you. Sex is food for the race, not for you. You will die, but through sex humanity can live. So it is not really your problem; it is a racial problem. You can even leave it, but you cannot leave food because that is your problem. It is concerned with you. So if you go on a fast, by and by sex will disappear; it will become more and more distant.
55. Any time natural instinct is transcended, you grow. You have made a volitional decision, so your being will grow and you will acquire an essence.
56. This process is alchemical: observe anger, and anger is transformed into light; observe sex, and sex is transformed into light. Observe any inner phenomenon which creates heat. Observe it, and through observation it becomes light. And if your every heat phenomenon is transformed into light, you will come to feel the inner moon. And when there is no heat left, then you have accumulated the nectar of the full moon. And through this nectar you become immortal. Not in this body, not with this body: you become immortal because you transcend life and death both. Then you are naivedya: then you are a food offering to the Divine – to the Total.
57. Unconsciousness is such a drug; consciousness is such an effort. When you learn something, you have to be conscious every moment. That consciousness is felt as a strain. It is not, but because we are always behaving in a mechanical way, it seems to be. The person who is thinking in terms of spirituality must think in terms of awareness – more and more awareness. Awareness comes only when you go on facing new factors.
58. Sex is there: do not fight it; try to understand it. But we are fighting with ourselves. Either we are identified with the mind or we are fighting with the mind. In both the cases we are the losers. If you are identified, then you will indulge in anger, in sex, in greed, in jealousy. If you are fighting, then you will create anti-attitudes. Then you will create inner divisions. Then you will create inner polarities. And you will be divided – no one else, because the anger is your anger. Now if you fight it, you will have double anger – anger plus this angriness against anger – and you will be divided. You can go on fighting, but this fight is just absurd. It is as if I am trying to fight my right hand with my left hand. I can go on fighting. Sometimes my right hand will win, sometimes my left hand will win – but there is no victory. You can play with the game, but there is neither defeat nor victory.
59. If you are really aware, you will transcend. Awareness is not a method for transcendence. AWARENESS IS TRANSCENDENCE. This constant awareness of your mind dissolves your greed, your anger, your sex, your hate, your jealousy, by and by. They dissolve automatically. There is no effort to dissolve them, not even any intention to dissolve them, not any longing to dissolve them. They are there, so rather than an intention to dissolve them, acceptance is more helpful.
60. Think of sex, and mind is absorbed. No need to concentrate – it concentrates. No need to make any effort – mind flows easily. Really, we don’t know anything else except sex by which we can understand what concentration means. So it happens always that whenever a person can concentrate on any other thing, sex will not be a problem for him – whenever! Even if he is just a scientist, a research-worker, working in his lab, if he can concentrate on his work then sex will not be a problem in his life at all. But if you cannot concentrate on anything else, then your mind will be flowing through the channel of sex constantly. One thing must be understood: when you are thinking about sex, you are totally absorbed. There is no wavering. You even forget that you are thinking about sex – you may remember afterwards. Even this much wavering is not there. You forget that you are different and that this procession of sexual thoughts and images is different. You become one with them. This is what is meant when bhaktas say, ”the constant remembering of the Divine – without you, without ’I’.” The same phenomenon occurs, only the object changes. It is not sex now; the object becomes Divine. And unless the Divine becomes as absorbing as sex is naturally, you cannot flow upward. So the upward flow is an effort: you have to pull yourself together for it. The downward flow is easy. That’s why, whenever you feel tense, sex becomes a relaxation, a relief – because every tension means that you have been pulling yourself together towards something which is not natural. Then if you can relax to the downward flow, you will feel a relief. So in the West particularly, sex has become just a relief – just a relief from tensions. It is, and it is because when you flow downward no effort is needed. So sex is used by many, really by ninety-nine percent of people, as a tranquillizer. If you move in sex then you can sleep well. Why? Because when the mind is flowing downward your whole body is relaxed. Unless you are relaxed in the same way when your mind is going upward, you are not a religious person at all.
61. A really free consciousness will not be sensual but will be sensitive – deeply sensitive and sensuous. Really, when a Buddha sees a flower, he sees the flower in its totality, in its total beauty, in its total aliveness. The colour, the fragrance, everything, Buddha sees in its totality. He will never think again about this flower – he will never be sensual. He will not hanker again to see it more and more, repeatedly. He will never think again about this flower – not because he is not sensuous, but because he is totally sensuous, and he has lived this experience so deeply that there is no need to repeat. The need to repeat comes because you cannot live any moment totally – so you eat, and again you have to think to repeat it; you love, and you have to think to repeat it. You are less concerned with living than you are concerned with repetition. This repetitive hankering is sensuality.
62. One part is biological, hereditary; another is sociological. There is sex: become aware that the unconscious instinct is forcing your body mechanism towards a particular object, towards a particular act. But don’t fight it because that fight is again, from the sociological part of the unconscious which says that sex is sin. Be aware of both, be conscious of both: there is sex, and there is the concept that sex is sin. Both are coming from some place you don’t know – from a deep darkness within. Be conscious – don’t do anything! Just remain conscious. Try to be in an alert state. Don’t fight with the sex, don’t condemn it – don’t go to indulge in it. Simply remain conscious of the fact that something is happening inside. If you can remain conscious of the fact that something is happening inside. If you can remain with the fact without dong anything, you will feel that your consciousness is growing and penetrating the dark realm of the unconscious.
63. If you are alert, two things happen: the energy that was going to be used as indulgence or as suppression will become part of your alertness. Your alertness will be strengthened through that energy. That energy will move to your alertness; you will become more alert. That energy will become a fuel to your consciousness. You will be more conscious, and for the first time the unconscious will not be able to force you. For the first time unconsciousness will be incapable of manipulating you. And once you know the feeling of this freedom, that the unconscious cannot manipulate you – without any fight, without any struggle, without any conflict – then your consciousness has become stronger. And, by and by, the filed of consciousness will grow and the field of unconsciousness will shrink. your human iceberg will have gained one part more: you will be two parts conscious, eight parts unconscious. This is a long journey, and by and by you will become three parts conscious, seven parts unconscious. As you gain more it is just like reclaiming land from the ocean. The unconscious is a vast ocean; you have to reclaim land inch by inch. But the moment you reclaim land, the ocean shrinks back. A day comes, just like it came to a Buddha or to a Jesus, when you are conscious all the ten parts and the unconscious has disappeared. You are just light inside and no darkness. This is the flowering. And for the first time you become aware of your immortality. for the first time you are not now a seed. For the first time now for you there is no becoming – you have become a being. If this expression can be allowed: You have become a being! Now you are a being! In this enlightened state of being, there is no suffering, no conflict, no misery. You are filled with bliss. Inside you are bliss, outside you are compassion. You have become sensitive to everything. Because of that sensitivity, a Buddha is compassion outside; inside a deep silent pool of bliss and outside a compassion. Buddha’s lips are smiling with a deep bliss, and his eyes are filled with tears – in a deep compassion. That’s why you can work both ways. If you grow in consciousness, you will grow in compassion; if you grow in compassion, you will grow in consciousness. But to grow in compassion is very The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol 1 233 Osho CHAPTER 17. TOWARDS A TOTAL FLOWERING OF CONSCIOUSNESS difficult – because you can again deceive. So the only right path is to grow in consciousness, then compassion comes as a shadow. Otherwise you can deceive and your compassion can just be a facade, a deception. Your compassion can again be an unconscious act. Then it is sentimental, emotional – not existential. Then you can weep, you can sympathize and you can serve. But this is going to be again an unconscious thing. The surest and most certain path is to grow in consciousness.
64. You might have heard that the seventh chakra in yoga is sahasrardal kamal – the one-thousandpetalled lotus on the seventh chakra in your head. That seventh chakra is the last stage, the peak, the Everest of consciousness. The first chakra is muladhar – the sex center, and the last chakra is sahasrar. Sex is the most unconscious thing in you, and the sahasrar is the most conscious. These are the two poles. We live around the sex center, move around it. Whatsoever we do is related with sex, howsoever distant it may look. Your earning money, your accumulating wealth, may not look at all related with sex, but they are related. The more wealth you have, the more sex you can have; it becomes more possible. The more power you have, the more sex you can have; it becomes more possible. You may forget completely, and ends may become means and means may become ends; that’s another thing. One person can go on accumulating wealth for his whole life, and he may completely forget for what he is doing it. But every power search is for sex. We move around the center of sex, we are bound to because unless we grow in consciousness we cannot go beyond it. That is the most unconscious-rooted center, the lowest, and for that reason the deepest and the most unconscious. The higher you move in consciousness, the further you go from sex. And then there is a flowering of a different type. The whole energy moves to the seventh – sahasrar. And when the whole energy comes to the seventh chakra, it becomes a flower – one-thousand-petalled. Mm? – this is a beautiful imagery. It means with unlimited, infinite petals, the flower opens.
65. THE UNCONSCIOUS can be transformed only through awareness. It is difficult, but there is no other way. There are many methods for being aware, but awareness is necessary. You can use methods to be aware, but you will have to be aware. Of course, there are many methods for being aware – mm? – that is a different thing. There are many ways to create light – but light will have to be created. You can create a fire and there will be no darkness. And you can use a kerosene lamp and there will be no darkness, and you can use electricity and there will be no darkness. But whatsoever the case, whatsoever the method of producing light, light has to be produced. So light is a must, and whatsoever I will say in reference to this question will be about methods to produce awareness. They are not alternatives, remember. They are not alternatives to awareness – nothing can be. Awareness is the only possibility for dispelling darkness, for dispelling unconsciousness.
66. But how to create awareness? I talked about one method which is the purest: to be aware inside of whatsoever happens on the boundary line of the unconscious and to the conscious – to be aware there. Anger is there. Anger is produced in darkness; anger has roots in the unconscious. Only branches and leaves come into the conscious. Roots, seeds, the energy source, are in the unconscious. You become aware only of faraway branches. Be conscious of these branches. The more conscious you are, the more you will be capable of looking into darkness. Inner darkness, unconsciousness, is the same. Look into it. But you can look only if you are not active. If you begin to act, your mind is distracted. Don’t act inside. Anger is there – don’t act, don’t condemn, don’t appreciate, don’t indulge in it, and don’t suppress it. Don’t do anything – just look at it! observe it! Understand the distinction. What happens ordinarily is quite the reverse. If you are angry, then your mind is focused on the cause of anger outside – always! Someone has insulted you – you are angry. Now there are three things: the cause of anger outside, the source of anger inside, and in between these two you are. Anger is your energy inside, the cause which has provoked your energy to come up is outside, and you are in between. The natural way of the mind is not to be aware of the source, but to be focused on the cause outside. Whenever you are angry you are in deep concentration on the cause outside. Mahavir has called KRODHA – anger – a sort of meditation. He has named it ROUDRA DHYAN – meditation on negative attitudes. It is! – because you are concentrated. Really, when you are in deep anger you are so concentrated that the whole world disappears. Only the cause of anger is focused. Your total energy is on the cause of anger, and you are so much focused on the cause that you forget yourself completely. That’s why in anger you can do things about which, later on, you can say, ”I did them in spite of myself.” You were not. For awareness you have to take an about-turn. You have to concentrate not on the cause outside, but on the source inside. Forget the cause. Close your eyes, and go deep and dig into the source. Then you can use the same energy which was to be wasted on someone outside – the energy moves inwards. Anger has much energy. Anger is energy – the purest of fires inside. Don’t waste it outside. Take another example. You are feeling sexual: sex is again energy, fire. But whenever you feel sexual, again you are focused on someone outside, not on the source. you begin to think of someone – of the lover, of the beloved, A-B-C-D – but when you are filled with sex your focus is always on the other. You are dissipating energy. Not only in the sexual act do you dissipate energy, but in sexual thinking you dissipate it even more because a sexual act is a momentary thing. It comes to a peak, the energy is released, and you are thrown back. But sexual thinking can continuously be there. You can continue it in sexual thinking, you can dissipate energy. And everyone is dissipating energy. Ninety percent of our thinking is sexual. Whatsoever you are doing outside, inside sex is a constant concern – you may not even be aware of it. You are sitting in a room and a woman enters: your posture changes suddenly. Your spine is moire erect, your breathing changes, your blood pressure is different. You may not be aware at all of what has happened, but your whole body has reacted sexually. you were a different person when the woman was not there; now again you are a different person. An all-male group is a different group, and all-female group is a different group. Let one male come in or one female, and the whole group, the whole energy pattern, changes suddenly. You may not be conscious of it, but when your mind is focused on someone, your energy begins to flow. when you feel sexual, look at the source, not at the cause – remember this. Science is more concerned with the cause and religion is more concerned with the source. The source is always inside; the cause is always outside. With cause you are in a chain reaction. With cause you are connected with your environment. With source you are connected with yourself. So remember this. This is the purest method to change unconscious energy into conscious energy. Take an about-turn – look inside! It is going to be difficult because our look has become fixed. We are like a person whose neck is paralyzed, and who cannot move and look back. Our eyes have become fixed. We have been looking outside for lives together – for millennia – so we don’t know how to look inside. Do this: whenever something happens in your mind, follow it to the source. Anger is there – a sudden flash has come to you – close your eyes, meditate on it. From where is this anger arising? Never ask the question: who has made it possible? who has made you angry? That is a wrong question. Ask which energy in you is transforming into anger – from where is this anger coming up, bubbling up, what is the source inside from where this energy is coming? Be concerned with from where anger is bubbling up, from where the sex desire has come in. Follow it, take steps backwards. Meditate silently and go with anger to the roots. It is difficult but it is not impossible. It is not easy. It is not going to be easy because it is a fight against a long, rooted habit. The whole past has to be broken, and you have to do something new which you have never done before. It is just the weight of sheer habit which will create the difficulty. But try it, and then you are creating a new direction for energy to move. You are beginning to be a circle, and in a circle energy is never dissipated. My energy comes up and moves outside – it can never become a circle now; it is simply dissipated. If my movement inwards is there, then the same energy which was going out turns upon itself. My meditation leads this energy back to the same source from where the anger was coming. It becomes a circle. This inner circle is the strength of a Mahavir. The sex energy, not moving to someone else, moves back to its own source. This circle of sex energy is the strength of a Buddha.
67. The science of japa says that when you become a hearer of your own sound, then you have reached. Then you have completed the japa. And there is much in it. When you see a sound, for example, ”Ram”, your peripheral apparatus is used in creating it, your vocal apparatus. Or it you create a mental sound, then your mind is used to create it. But when you become alert about it, that alertness is of the center, not of the periphery. If I say ”Ram”, this is on the periphery of my being. When I listen to this sound ”Ram” inside, that is from my center – because awareness belongs to the center. If you become aware in the center, now you have the light with you. you can dispel unconsciousness.
68. The basic natural possibility of muladhar chakra is the sex urge of the physical body. The very first question that arises in the mind of the seeker is what to do in regard to this central principle. Now there is another possibility of this chakra, and that is brahmacharya, celibacy, which is attainable through meditation. Sex is the natural possibility and brahmacharya is its transformation. The more the mind is focused upon and gripped by sexual desire, the more difficult it will be to reach its ultimate potential of brahmacharya.
69. Now this means that we can utilize the situation given to us by nature in two ways. We can live in the condition that nature has placed us in – but then the process of spiritual growth cannot begin – or we transform this state. The only danger in the path of transformation is that there is the possibility that we may begin to fight with our natural center. What is the real danger in the path of a seeker? The first obstacle is that if the meditator indulges only in nature’s order of things he cannot rise to the ultimate possibility of his physical body and he stagnates at the starting point. On the one hand there is a need; on the other hand there is a suppression which causes the meditator to fight the sex urge. Suppression is an obstacle on the path of meditation. This is the obstacle of the first chakra. Transformation cannot come about with suppression. If suppression is an obstruction, what is the solution? Understand-ing will then solve the matter. Transformation takes place within as you begin to understand sex. There is a reason for this. All elements of nature lie blind and unconscious within us. If we become conscious of them, transformation begins. Awareness is the alchemy; awareness is the alchemy of changing them, of transforming them. If a person becomes awake toward his sexual desires with his total feelings and his total understanding, then brahmacharya will begin to take birth within him in place of sex. Unless a person reaches brahmacharya in his first body it is difficult to work on the potentiality of other centers.
70. If you run away from sex in fright how will you ever reach brahmacharya? Sex was the opening given by nature and brahmacharya is the quest that has to be undertaken through this very opening. If you see in this perspective there is no need to beg from anywhere; understanding is what is required. All of existence is there for the purpose of understanding. Learn from anybody, hear everyone, and, finally, understand your own self within.
71. Sex serves no greater purpose than a sneeze. A tension is thrown out, a load is unburdened. When the energy is thrown out a load is unburdened. When the energy is thrown out you feel dissipated. To relax is one thing, to feel dissipated is quite another. Relaxation means the energy is within and you are resting, and to feel dissipated means energy is thrown out and you lie exhausted. You are weakened with the loss of energy and you think you are relaxing.
72. Remember, I say again and again that sex is the basic duality, and unless you transcend sex the Brahman cannot be achieved. All other dualities are just reflections and reflections of this basic duality. Birth and death – again a duality. They will disappear when you are neither male or female. When you have a consciousness which goes beyond both, birth and death disappear, matter and mind disappear, this world and that world disappear, heaven and hell disappear. All dualities disappear when the basic duality within you disappears, because all dualities are simply echoing and re-echoing the basic division within you.
73. If you allow your unconscious to come nearer to your conscious, too much sex-obsession will disappear. If you are a man and you deny your unconscious, you are denying your inner woman; then you will be attracted to outer women too much. It will become a perversion because then it is a substitute. The inner femininity has been denied; now the outer femininity becomes obsessive to you. You will think and think about it; now your whole mind will become sexual. If you are a woman and you have denied the man, then ’man’ will take possession of you. Then whatsoever you do or think, the basic color will remain sexual.
74. So much fantasy about sex is because you have denied your inner other. So now this is a compensation. Now you are compensating for something which you have denied to yourself. And look at the absurdity: the more you get obsessed with the other sex the more you feel afraid; the more you deny the inner the more you suppress it; and the more you suppress it the more you become obsessed.