"Sex is not to be condemned"

 

    Look at Shiva with his consort, Devi. Look at them! They don’t seem to be two – they are one. The oneness is so deep that it has even gone into symbols. We all have seen the Shivalinga. It is a phallic symbol – Shiva’s sex organ – but it is not alone, it is based in Devi’s vagina. The Hindus of the old days were very daring. Now when you see a Shivalinga you never remember that it is a phallic symbol. We have forgotten; we have tried to forget it completely. 

    Jung remembers in his autobiography, in his memoirs, a very beautiful and funny incident. He came to India and went to see Konark, and in the temple of Konark there are many, many Shivalingas, many phallic symbols. The pundit who was taking him around explained everything to him except the Shivalingas. And they were so many, it was difficult to escape this. Jung was well aware, but just to tease the pundit he went on asking, ”But what are these?” So the pundit at last said into his ear, in Jung’s ear, ”Do not ask me here, I will tell you afterwards. This is a private thing.” 

    Jung must have laughed inside – these are the Hindus of today. Then outside the temple the pundit came near and said, ”It was not good of you to ask before others. I will tell you now. It is a secret.” And then again in Jung’s ear he said, ”They are our private parts.” 

    When Jung went back, he met one great scholar – a scholar of oriental thought, mythology, philosophy – Heinrich Zimmer. He related this anecdote to Zimmer. Zimmer was one of the most gifted minds who ever tried to penetrate Indian thought and he was a lover of India and of its ways of thinking – of the oriental non-logical, mystic approach toward life. When he heard this from Jung, he laughed and said, ”This is good for a change. I have always heard about great Indians – Buddha, Krishna, Mahavir. What you relate says something not about any great Indians, but about Indians.” 

    Love for Shiva is the great gate. And for him sex is not something to be condemned. For him sex is the seed and love is the flowering of it, and if you condemn the seed you condemn the flower. Sex can become love. If it never becomes love then it is crippled. Condemn the crippledness, not the sex. Love must flower, sex must become love. If it is not becoming it is not the fault of sex, it is your fault. 

    Sex must not remain sex; that is the tantra teaching. It must be transformed into love. And love also must not remain love. It must be transformed into light, into meditative experience, into the last, ultimate mystic peak. How to transform love? Be the act and forget the actor. While loving, be love – simply love. Then it is not your love or my love or anybody else’s – it is simply LOVE. When you are not there, when you are in the hands of the ultimate source, or current, when you are in love, it is not you who is in love. When the love has engulfed you, you have disappeared; you have just become a flowing energy.

    D. H. Lawrence, one of the most creative minds of this age, was knowingly or unknowingly a tantra adept. He was condemned in the West completely, his books were banned. There were many cases in the courts only because he had said, ”Sex energy is the only energy, and if you condemn it and suppress it you are against the universe. Then you will never be capable of knowing the higher flowering of this energy. And when it is suppressed it becomes ugly – this is the vicious circle.”

    Priests, moralists, so-called religious people – popes, shankaracharyas and others – they go on condemning sex. They say that this is an ugly thing. And when you suppress it, it becomes ugly. So they say, ”Look! What we said is true. It is proved by you. Look! Whatsoever you are doing is ugly and you know it is ugly.” 

    But it is not sex which is ugly, it is these priests who have made it ugly. Once they have made it ugly they are proved right. And when they are proved right you go on making it more and more ugly. 

    Sex is innocent energy – life flowing in you, existence alive in you. Do not cripple it! Allow it to move toward the heights. That is, sex must become love. What is the difference? When your mind is sexual you are exploiting the other; the other is just an instrument to be used and thrown away. When sex becomes love the other is not an instrument, the other is not to be exploited; the other is not really the other. When you love, it is not self-centered. Rather, the other becomes significant, unique.

    It is not that you are exploiting him – no! On the contrary, you both are joined in a deep experience. You are partners of a deep experience, not the exploiter and the exploited. You are helping each other to move into a different world of love. Sex is exploitation. Love is moving together into a different world. 

    If this moving is not momentary and if this moving becomes meditative – that is, if you can forget yourself completely and the lover and the beloved disappear, and there is only love flowing – then, says Shiva, everlasting life is yours.