"Fire Of Sex"

 

    If we are observant, we will see that a lot of poison has accumulated in man. Perhaps it is because of his quack doctors, but the foremost reason is his refusal to accept what is natural in him, his refusal to accept his fundamental being. We have tried to curb and annihilate our inborn urges in vain; no attempts are made to transform them, to elevate them. We have forced ourselves to control that energy in a wrong way. That energy is bubbling in us like molten lava; it is always pushing from inside: if we are not careful, it may topple us at any moment. And do you know what happens when it gets the slightest opening?

    A plane meets with an accident. You are nearby and you rush to the scene. What is the first question that will come to your mind when you see a body in the debris?

”Is this person Hindu or Muslim?”

No.

”Is this person Indian or Chinese?”

No.

In a split second, and first and foremost, you will look to see whether the body is a man’s or a woman’s.

    Are you aware why this question springs to mind first of all? It is because of repressed sex. It is the repression of sex that makes you so conscious of the difference between a man and a woman. You are able to forget the name, face or nationality of someone – if I had met you, I might forget your name, your face, your caste, your age, your status, everything about you – but you never forget the sex of a person, you never forget whether someone was male or female. Have you ever had any doubt that the person you had a conversation with, let’s say, on the train to Delhi last year, was a man?

    Why? When you forget everything else about a person, why can’t you erase that aspect from your memory? It is because the awareness of sex is so firmly rooted in man’s mind, in his thought processes. Sex is ever-present, ever-active.

    Neither our society nor our planet can ever be healthy so long as this iron curtain, this distance, exists between men and women. Man cannot be at peace with himself so long as this burning fire rages inside him, so long as he sits tightly on it. He has to strive to suppress it every moment of every day. The fire is burning us. It is scorching us. But even so, we are not prepared to face it, not prepared to look into it.

What is this fire?

It is not an enemy, it is a friend.

What is the nature of this fire?

    I want to tell you that once you know this fire it will no longer be an enemy, it will become a friend. If you understand this fire, it will not burn you. It will warm your homes, it will cook for you, and it will also become your lifelong friend.

    Electricity has flashed in the sky for millions of years. Sometimes it killed people, but nobody ever thought that this very same energy would someday run our fans and light our homes. Nobody could imagine these possibilities then. But today this electricity has become our friend. How? Had we shut our eyes to it, we would never have fathomed its secrets, we would never have utilized it; it would have remained our enemy, it would always have been an object of fear. But man assumed a friendly attitude towards electricity. He took it upon himself to understand it, to know it, and slowly, slowly, a lasting friendship developed. Had that not happened, we would hardly be able to manage today.

    The sex inside man, his libido, is even more vital than electricity. A minute atom of matter annihilated an entire hundred thousand people in the city of Hiroshima, but an atom of man’s energy can create a new life, a new person! Sex is more powerful than an atom bomb. Have you ever thought about the infinite possibilities of this force, about how we can transform it to better mankind? An embryo can become a Gandhi, a Mahavir, a Buddha, a Christ. An Einstein can evolve from it; a Newton can be manifest in it. An infinitely small atom of sex energy has a towering person like Gandhi manifest in it!

    But we are not inclined to even try to understand sex. We have to summon immense courage even to talk about it in public. What kind of fear is it that plagues us, so that we are not prepared to understand the force out of which the whole world is born? What is this fear? Why does sex alarm us so?

    When this urge of sex is already inherent in us, why should we not talk about it? Unless we can understand its behavior, can analyze it, how can we hope to raise it to a higher plane? By understanding it we can transform it, we can conquer it, we can sublimate it. Unless that happens, we will die and still we will be unable to free ourselves from the grip of sex. Those who forbid talk about sex are the same people who have pushed humanity into an abyss of sex. Those who are frightened of sex, and have therefore convinced themselves they are innocent of sex, are lunatics. They have conspired to make the whole world a gigantic asylum.