MEDITATION IS EASY WHEN YOU ARE NO LONGER INTERESTED IN SEX



IF SEX IS YOUR INTEREST, FORGET ALL ABOUT MEDITATION

"You say your interests are two: sex and meditation. If sex is your interest, forget all about meditation. When you get tired of sex, fed up with it, then the same energy that was involved in sex can be used for meditation. But you can't have both together -- that will be like riding on two horses together. Either you have sex, or you have meditation."

"But one thing you have to understand: you cannot have meditation unless you have transcended sex. But transcendence should not be understood in the old ways as repression. Transcendence is experience, so much experience that you don't think anymore about attraction, infatuation."

"Sex simply drops like dry leaves from the trees."

"It is not that you have to make some effort. If you have to make some effort to drop it, it will remain with you. And if it is there, meditation is impossible; it won't let you be silent. It is one of the most torturous biological slaveries. It is good to get rid of it by experiencing it with totality and intensity -- don't think of meditation at all. Sex, lived totally, will bring you to meditation; and then meditation will be very easy, because there will be no biological pull against it. Your so-called priests, monks, saints, cannot meditate."

"You are saying sex and meditation are your two basic interests. Please have one basic interest! And sex is absolutely first, because that is your biological bondage. You have to get free of it, and the way to get free of it is not to fight with it -- that's what religious people have been doing for centuries. They have not succeeded."

"Not a single person has succeeded in transcending sex by fighting it, by repressing it. Live it! -- and don't live it with guilt, don't live it as if it is something wrong, it is a sin. It is not. It is neither a sin nor a crime, it is an absolutely natural way of reproducing. You are not responsible for it."



SEX IS NATURAL FORCE, YOU CANNOT FIGHT WITH NATURE, BUT YOU CAN GO BEYOND IT

"You are produced through sex. Your every cell is sexual. Nature has found a way to go on reproducing life in new forms; sex is simply a methodology which nature has chosen. You cannot fight with nature. Nature is vast and tremendously strong, but you can get beyond it, and the way beyond is through it -- not by fighting, but by understanding, experiencing.... And the more you become experienced, capable of understanding, it is absolutely easy to move your energy into the second stage of evolution: from sex to meditation."

"Meditation is very simple if sex has been lived completely without any fear, any repression, any guilt. My own understanding is that by the time... just as at the age of fourteen you become interested in sex, if you live perfectly and totally and sincerely -- religiously -- your sexual life, by the age of forty-two you will be out of it."

"Life has seven year cycles. If you take as an average seventy years, it has ten cycles of seven years. The first seven years you are absolutely innocent -- you are just as a saint should be. Your second seven years are a preparation for sex; slowly, slowly, the snake of sex starts uncoiling within you. By the age of fourteen you are mature and you can reproduce children. From fourteen to twenty-one your sexual energy is at its highest peak, exactly between fourteen and twenty-one: that means seventeen and a half is the climax of sexual energy."

"But this society has lived with such repressive and unnatural, unscientific ideas that these are the years when you are told to be celibate. And these are the years when you could have lived sex, and celibacy would have come by itself by the time you are forty-two. Between twenty-one and twenty-eight, sex is very normal, very natural. From twenty-eight to thirty-five, sex starts declining. From thirty-five to forty-two, sex reaches its ultimate decline. From forty-two to forty-nine, sex disappears. That's why in ancient India the wise people decided that by the time one is fifty-one should start preparing for vanprashtha. His face should be now towards the mountains, towards the forest -- that is the meaning of vanprashtha. He is still in the world, but now his whole consciousness has turned and he is getting ready to move into the deep forest to be alone. The days of meditation have come."

"By the time a person is fifty his children will be near about twenty-five. They must be getting married, they must be getting into a profession. The father can look forward to twenty-five years more... these are the twenty-five years, from fifty to seventy-five, that he can watch -- he can live in the world yet not be of the world. He can watch his children slowly taking over. And after seventy-five all his interest in the world will have disappeared; then meditation will be his only interest."

"But this is just a formal categorization. It depends on you and your intensity of living. You can be beyond sex by the time you are thirty-five. You can be beyond sex without much difficulty when you are forty-two. But it is unfortunate that people die still as foolish as young people."

"Psychologists have come to the conclusion that most people die with the idea of sex... that is their last idea. They may be repeating the name of God, but inside they are thinking, If only it was possible one time more...! They have not lived their life wholeheartedly. That's why something that should have ended at forty-two has continued up to eighty, up to ninety."

"Live your first interest and be finished with it. But be finished with it by living it, joyously! There is nothing wrong, there is no sin. Then meditation will become absolutely simple and easy, because your mind will not be burdened with sexual infatuation and desires. That is your only bondage. All other bondages are secondary, all other bondages are branches of your sexuality."

"For what do you want money? For what do you want power? Have you watched that all other interests are centered on sex? A man without money will not be able to get the most beautiful woman; a man without power will not be able to get the most beautiful woman. All your so-called desires are centered on a single fact, a single interest, and that is sex. Just live it, and live it joyously without any fear of hell or heaven. There is no hell, no heaven."

"Once you are out of sex, once it has disappeared like smoke disappearing into the sky and you cannot see it, then meditation is so easy. You don't have to make any effort, you have just to sit silently with your eyes closed, relaxed, and you will find meditation is there."

"Sex and meditation...? You will not be able to live sex fully, and that will go on lingering with you. And you will not be able to meditate because sex will continuously interfere. You know the stories of the old seers, that even at their height, in their old age, after a long, long preparation of austerities, fasting, chanting, studying holy scriptures – doing everything -- when they come to the point of realization, the stories say that suddenly apsaras from heaven... Apsaras are nothing but heavenly prostitutes, specially provided for the saints. They are sent down to disturb these poor fellows' meditation."

"This is strange, why should anybody be bothered about these poor fellows who have been torturing themselves in every possible way -- starving, fighting with their body, repressing their sex? There is nobody who is sending these apsaras, and these apsaras are nowhere. It is just their own repressed sexuality that starts coming up in fantasies, in hallucinations."

"And it is so simple... if you want to experiment with what hallucination is, just go to a mountain cave alone, fast three weeks, and don't meet anyone. By the end of the second week you will start talking to yourself -- and not only will you talk, you will answer also! By the third week you will start seeing people... if you are a man you will see women; if you are a woman you will see men. By the fourth week you will not be able to make a distinction at all whether the woman that you see sitting in front of you in the cave is real or an hallucination..! Just four weeks' experiment and you will know how apsaras have come. They will come to you too; they have not stopped the process of coming. But it is simply the hallucination of your repressed desire, so deeply repressed that it takes revenge -- with a vengeance. My suggestion to you is, first sex, because it is more basic to your body, to your life; it is the foundation of life. Meditation is the highest peak, but sex is the roots. First think of the roots."

"Meditation is the flowers. They come at the very end, at the very top of the tree; they will come. But don't try both together, otherwise you will remain wishy-washy, always half-hearted... meditating and thinking about sex, making love and thinking about Gautam Buddha! This will simply drive you crazy."
(Excerpts from: The Great Pilgrimage # 5)



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