OSHO,
I HAVE TAKEN THE VOW TO REMAIN A CELIBATE MY WHOLE LIFE, BUT WHY DO I STILL SUFFER FROM SEXUAL THOUGHTS, FANTASIES AND DREAMS?
Swami Nityananda Giri,
IT is NATURAL – it is because of your vow. Nobody can change one’s life by force. The vow simply
is a violent act against yourself. It will only repress your sex, and the repressed will take revenge;
it will come on again and again and again. You will push it from one door, it will enter from another
door. You cannot get rid of it so easily, so cheaply.
Just the other day, Morarji Desai revealed that when he was the prime minister he had visited a
nightclub in Canada, just to find out what was going on there. Now, why he should be interested in
a nightclub? And whatsoever is going on there, why he is interested in it? At the age of eighty-two!
And he had kept it a secret up to now; he never revealed it before.
A repressed sexuality will haunt you to the very end of your life. Even when you will be dying you
will be having sexual fantasies.
Swami Nityananda Giri, it is still time – beware! Life is never changed by vows, life is changed by
awareness. Never take a vow; the vow simply means that you are forcing something upon yourself.
Try to understand. When there is understanding there is no need to take a vow; your understanding
is enough. You see something is wrong and it drops.
Seeing is enough, understanding is enough; no other discipline is ever needed. Whenever you
need some other discipline it means your understanding is lacking, something is missing in your
understanding. You are trying to compensate your understanding by taking a vow, but the very
taking of the vow shows that you are afraid of your sexuality. Then it will come, then it is bound to
come.
And now you are asking me: WHY DO I STILL SUFFER FROM SEXUAL THOUGHTS, FANTASIES
AND DREAMS?
You must be hoping that by taking a vow all this will stop. It is your vow that is causing it! If you
have lived a natural life, if you have gone through the world and all its experiences of good and bad,
pleasure and pain, you would have learned something; you would have come out of the world with
understanding.
But for centuries the so-called saints have depended on violence. They talk about non-violence, but
they go on doing violence to themselves.
”I am sick and tired of being left alone every weekend,” growled the golf widow at breakfast one
Saturday. ”If you think you are going out to play today…”
”Nonsense, dear,” the husband interrupted, reaching for the toast. ”Golf is the furthest thing from my
mind. Please pass the putter.”
If you just force things they will erupt, they will come back.
A seventy year-old man went to see the doctor.
”I have been in practice for twenty-five years,” the doctor told him, ”and I have never heard of such a
complaint What do you mean, your virility is too high?”
The septuagenarian sighed. Pointing to his head, he said, ”It is all in my mind.”
”The virility has gone too high – it’s all in my mind.”
Now, Nityananda Giri, you have taken a vow. Your sexuality is repressed at its natural center: it
has reached in your head, and that is far more dangerous because it will poison your head. Now in
dreams, in thoughts, in fantasies it will come.
Just go for a fast one day and you will see what I mean – you will think of food the whole day.
Ordinarily you don’t think about the food at all; the food is not a problem. When you feel hungry you
eat, and then all is forgotten. But go for a fast, and suddenly food becomes your obsession. It is a
simple psychological fact.
But religious people have been really stupid: simple facts they go on denying, and they can always
rationalize. They will say, ”It is because of your past lives’ bad karmas that, Nityananda Gin, you are
still suffering from sexual thoughts.” They will tell you to practice yoga, stand on your head, and all
kinds of nonsense.
Just the last week I was reading about one yogi, Dhirendra Brahmachari, who goes on showing his
yoga postures on the television. And he was telling the last week to his audience that, ”Do you know
how I remain so healthy? I am pulling my anus upwards right now, but you cannot see it because
I am wearing clothes.” And then he told that his disciple, one girl who sits by his side to show yoga
postures, ”She is also holding her anus upwards, but you cannot see because she is wearing the
clothes.”
The girl must have gone red! It is good that India has not yet gone for color TV – in black and white
you cannot see whether the girl is blushing or not. But then you have to do all kinds of nonsense
things. Now pulling your anus upwards will simply force your sexual energy to go into your head;
that’s what its purpose is. It is trying to bring the sexuality towards the head, and you will be more in
a danger.
And that’s the purpose of SIRSHASANA, headstand. Standing on your head, the basic purpose is
to force your sexual energy to go towards your head. Because of gravitation, if you stand on your
head naturally your sexual energy starts moving towards the head. But how long you can stand on
your head? Sooner or later you will have to stand on your feet.
And this messing around with centers is one of the problems all the religions have been facing.
Gurdjieff, one of the great Masters of this age, used to say that man has become so ugly for the
simple reason because none of his centers is functioning in a natural way; every center is being
interfered with by other centers, they have all become entangled. His whole effort was how to
disentangle them, how to bring the energy to each center that belongs to it.
And that’s my effort here too: to bring the energy to the right center, where it belongs. When all your
centers are functioning naturally you will have a deep silence in you, you will have a subtle harmony
in your being; a joy will surround you.
Nityananda Giri, you must have lived according to the old, traditional way; your name shows that.
Gin is one of the most ancient traditions of Hindu sannyasins; you will have to come out of it. You
will have to come out of your orthodoxy, out of your superstitions.
An elderly spinster went to see her doctor and complained that her sleep was being disturbed by
dreams of a young man who was constantly following her and flirting with her.
The doctor prescribed some pills, but a couple of weeks later she was back.
”What is the matter now?” he asked gently. ”You are sleeping better now, aren’t you?”
”No,” she said, ”Now I can’t sleep because I miss that young man so much!”
Life cannot be avoided easily. The only way to go beyond is to go through. Life is an opportunity to
grow – don’t avoid it. If you avoid it you will remain retarded.
Now what is happening to you cannot happen to any of my sannyasins, it is impossible – because
my sannyasins are living naturally, accepting whatsoever God has given. He knows better than you.
If he has given you a sexuality, then it means that there is something to be learned through it. It is
your creative energy – don’t repress it. Refine it, certainly, make it as pure as possible, because it is
your sexual energy which will create many things in your life.
This is a well known fact, that great poets naturally find that they are transcending their sexuality.
Great painters, great dancers, great musicians have always found it to go beyond sex very easily –
but not the so-called monks and the saints. They have found just the opposite: the more they have
tried, the more they were disillusioned, the more they got deeper into the mess.
This fact has to be meditated upon. A musician creates music, hence his sexual energy is used in
a non-sexual way. A dancer creates dance, he need not create children. He becomes a creator of
something higher – what is the need to create the lower? Even animals can create children; that is
nothing special to man. In fact, animals are far more productive – even mosquitoes can defeat you!
That is nothing special to you.
Now there are two ways: either repress sex – as has been done by all the so-called religious
traditions of the world – or transform it.
I am for transformation, hence I teach my sannyasins to be creative. Create music, create poetry,
create painting, create pottery, sculpture – create something! Whatsoever you do, do it with great
creativeness, bring something new into existence, and your sex will be fulfilled on a higher plane
and there will be no repression. Let your sex become more and more love and less and less lust.
And then finally let your love also become a little higher – that is prayer. Lust is the lowest form of
sex, love higher than sex, and prayer is the ultimate transformation.
The meditative person can transform his sexuality without any antagonism. without any conflict. He
is in deep friendship with all his energies, sexual or others; he is not in any fight. Why fight with your
own energies? Love them, rejoice in them, and help them to transcend the lower forms, the animal
forms. Let them move from the body towards the turiya, the fourth.
This is a total!y different process. That’s why I am so much opposed, because I am against all the
repressive traditions, all the so-called moral, puritanistic stupidities. I simply call them stupid. I am
not a polite person. If a spade is there I call it a spade – in fact, a fucking spade! I want to be clear
and straightforward. Two plus two is four to me, neither more nor less.
A Rajneesh sannyasin went to visit an old friend living in a big town. The only lodging he could find
was in a very dilapidated hotel. The receptionist told him he would have to share a double bed and
take his breakfast – toast, jam and coffee – upstairs with him that night.
He entered the room and was surprised to find a gorgeous blonde lying naked on the bed, fast
asleep. He prepared himself for bed, said his prayers and lay down to sleep.
Fifteen minutes later, he turned over and looked in the direction of the beautiful girl. ”Should I or
shouldn’t l? No! I must not!” he said to himself, and turned over and tried to sleep Half an hour later he turned around again, looked towards the girl and said to himself, ”No, I must
not! I won’t! It is not proper!” So he turned over again and went back to sleep.
But after half an hour he sat up and said out loud, ”I just can’t resist any more. I don’t care whether
I am breaking any rules or not.” So he got up, walked over to the foot of the bed, then poured his
coffee, buttered his toast… and ate his breakfast!
This is possible only to a Rajneesh sannyasin.
Nityananda Giri, to you it will be very difficult, impossible!
Once a Zen Master was asked, ”What sort of sex life do monks get?”
The Zen Master said, ”Nun!”
Don’t repress, try to understand your sexual energy. And you will be surprised, immensely surprised,
that it is not your enemy, it is your friend. It is not a curse, it is a blessing, because it is the source of all
your creativity. Have you known any impotent person to be creative? Have you known any impotent
person to create great music, painting. poetry? And why the so-called monks down the ages have
not been creative? They have not contributed anything to the earth, they have not enriched the
earth. They have not been a blessing; on the contrary, they have proved a curse. Why? – because
being repressive of their sexuality they became uncreative, they cannot create.
Creativity is sexual, basically sexual. When the painter gets lost into his painting it is the same
orgasmic joy that two lovers have when they meet and merge into each other; for a moment they
are no more separate. The painter gets the same joy, longer, deeper, far more profound, when he is
lost with the painting. A dancer comes to the highest point…
Hence my emphasis on dance and music here in my commune. I want everybody to be a dancer,
a singer, for the simple reason because that is the most natural, spontaneous way of transforming
your sex. When the dancer is completely lost, when there is only dance and no dancer left, he
experiences the greatest orgasm, more total than any sexual orgasm can ever be.
Nityananda Giri, if you accept your sexuality, if you embrace it with deep love and gratitude towards
God, knowing that it his gift so that there must be something in it which has to be discovered… it
is not to be rejected. Rejecting it will make you uncreative, and the uncreative person remains a
miserable life. That’s why your saints look so sad, with such long faces, almost dead and stinking.
Look again – look again into your own being, into your own existence, and you are in for a great
surprise.
A man was asked by his wife to bring home a live chicken for a special meal she was going to
prepare. He bought the chicken after work and was on his way home when he realized that he
had forgotten his front door key. He knew his wife would not be home for a few more hours, so he
decided to pass the time by going to the cinema.
He could not carry the chicken inside so he stuffed it down the front of his trousers, then bought a
ticket and went in. He sat down towards the front of the cinema, next to two old ladies. He soon became very engrossed in the film and did not notice that the chicken had poked its head through
his fly buttons.
”Winifred,” whispered one of the old ladies, nudging her friend. ”Look at that big thing poking through
this guy’s fly!”
Winifred grunted, ”Ah, Millie, when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all!”
”I know that,” replied Millie, ”but have you ever seen one that eats popcorn?”
