"Sex & Sexuality"

 

    Imagine a novice learning to ride a bicycle. The road may be big and wide, but if there is a small rock lying by the side of the road the cyclist will be afraid he will bump into the stone. There is a hundredto- one chance against his running into that stone – even a blind man would, in all probability, pass it safely by – but because of his fear the rider is only aware of the stone. The stone looms large in his mind and the road vanishes for him. He is hypnotized by that stone, drawn to it, and in the end he dashes against it. He collides with that very thing from which he has done his utmost to save himself.

The road was big and wide, so how did this man have an accident?

    The psychologist Coue says that the average mind is governed by the Law of Reverse-Effect. We collide with the very thing from which we are trying to save ourselves because the object of our fear becomes the center of our consciousness. In the same way, man has been trying to save himself from sex for the last five thousand years. And the result is that everywhere, in every nook and corner, he is confronted by sex – in all its various forms. The Law of Reverse-Effect has arrested the soul of man.    

    Have you never observed that the mind is pulled towards and hypnotized by the very thing it is trying to avoid? The people who taught man to be against sex are fully responsible for making him so aware of sex. The over-sexuality that exists in man can be blamed on perverted teachings.

    Today we are afraid to discuss sex. Why are we so mortally afraid of this subject? It is because of a presupposition that man may become sexual just by talking about sex. This view is totally wrong. There is, after all, a vast difference between sex and sexuality. Our society will only be free of the ghost of sex when we develop the courage to talk about sex in a rational and healthy manner.

    It is only by understanding sex in all its aspects that we will be able to transcend sex. You cannot free yourself from a problem by shutting your eyes to it. Only a madman thinks his enemy will vanish if he closes his eyes. The ostrich in the desert thinks in this way. The ostrich thrusts his head into the sand and, since he cannot see his enemy, he thinks his enemy is not there. This kind of logic is pardonable in the case of the ostrich, but in man it is unforgivable.

    As far as sex is concerned, man behaves no better than the ostrich. He thinks that by shutting his eyes, by ignoring it, sex will vanish. If such miracles could occur, life would be very easy indeed. But alas, nothing disappears just by pulling down the blinds. On the contrary, this is proof that we are scared of sex, that its attraction is more powerful than our resistance. Because we feel we cannot conquer sex, we shut our eyes to it.

    Shutting one’s eyes is a sign of weakness, and the whole of humanity is guilty of it. Not only has man blatantly shut his eyes to sex, he has also entered into innumerable inner conflicts with it. The devastating results of this war with sex are too well known to be enumerated here. Ninety-eight percent of mental illness, of neurosis, is because of the suppression of sex. Ninety-nine per cent of the women suffering from hysteria and related illnesses suffer from sexual disorders. The major cause of fear, of doubt, of anxiety, of the stress and strain on contemporary man, is the pressure of passion. Man has turned his back on an inherent and powerful urge. Without attempting to understand sex, we have shut our eyes to it out of fear. And the results have been catastrophic indeed.

    To see the truth of this, man need only scan his literature, the mirror of his mind. If a man from the moon or from Mars were to come here and go through our literature, were to read our books and our poetry, were to see our paintings, he would be surprised. He would wonder why all our art and literature is centered around sex.

    ”Why are all man’s poems, novels, magazines and stories saturated with sex? Why is there a halfnaked woman on every magazine cover? Why is every movie concerned with lust?” he would ask.

    He would be perplexed. The alien visitor would wonder why man thought about nothing but sex. He would be even more confused if he met a man and talked to him, because the man would try, would try very hard, to impress upon him that he was totally innocent of the existence of sex. The man would talk of the soul, of God, about heaven, about emancipation, but he would not say a word about sex, although his whole being would be filled with ideas about sex. The alien would be stunned to learn that man has even invented a thousand and one devices to gratify a desire about which not a breath is uttered.

    Man’s death-oriented religion has made man sex-minded. And it has perverted him from another angle as well. It shows him the golden pinnacle of celibacy, of brahmacharya, but gives him no guidance in getting a foothold on the first rung, in understanding the base, in understanding sex.

    First of all, we have to recognize sex and understand it; we have to comprehend this elemental urge. Only then can we strive to transcend it, to sublimate it, so we can reach the stage of celibacy. Without understanding this basic life-force in all its forms and facets, all man’s efforts to restrain and suppress it will only help him degenerate into a sick and incoherent lunatic. But we do not concentrate on the basic illness, we spout the high ideal of celibacy. Man has never been so sick, so neurotic, so wretched or so unhappy. Man is completely perverted. He is poisoned at the root.