There is a strange law of the human mind. Because it has not been understood, humanity has remained in great distress up to now. The law is this: forbid the mind to go in a certain direction — and the mind starts moving exactly there. Deny the mind something — and it becomes attracted to it. Fight the mind about anything — and the mind is compelled to lose to that very thing. The Law of Reverse Effect — in the realm of mind, outcomes turn upside down. This law needs to be understood very deeply.
Freud once went strolling with his wife in a garden. Their little son was with them. They wandered, sat, talked. When closing time came and they reached the gate, they realized their son had not been with them for a long while. Freud’s wife panicked. The gates were being shut; the gardeners were closing up. It was a big garden. Where had the boy gone? In her panic she cried, Where should I search?
Freud said, First let me ask you one thing: did you forbid your son to go anywhere? If you did, and if your boy has even a little intelligence, then in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases he will be exactly where he was forbidden to go.
His wife said, Yes — I told him not to go near the fountain.
Freud said, Come. If your son is unintelligent, he may be anywhere; if he has a little intelligence, we will find him at the fountain. They went — and there he was, sitting with his legs dangling, playing with the water.
His wife was amazed. How did you know he would be at the fountain?
Freud said, It’s a simple law of the mind. Wherever you prohibit, the mind goes. And not only your son — the whole of humanity has gone where man was told not to go.
Yet this little sutra has not been understood to this day. And the very people we call virtuous, respectable, saints — they have been the ones to push humanity into evil; this too has not been seen. Those we named Mahatmas are the very ones sitting on top of man’s true soul, suffocating it — this has not been understood. To understand this is immensely beneficial.
If, outside this passage, a board were hung that read: Peeping inside is forbidden — do you think respectable people could be found in Ahmedabad who would pass without peeking? Yes, a few might. Some respectable ones may turn their eyes the other way and pass. But while the eyes look elsewhere, the mind will remain glued to the board.
We do not see only with straight eyes; we also see with sidelong glances. And when seen directly, we are freed of certain things; when seen from the corner of the eye, those very things pursue us, and freedom from them becomes impossible.
Some may even avoid looking at the board out of fear — because our life and our so-called respectability stand not on inner worth, but on the fear of others’ eyes. Others are watching: a respectable man peeping behind a board that says Peeping forbidden! So from fear some will pass without peeking. But they will fall into great difficulty. They will reach the shop, the temple, the office — but their minds will circle around that board. The day will become arduous, living will become difficult. The board will call again and again: Come and peek! By evening, as darkness gathers, more and more people will find some excuse to pass by that road. The pretext may be anything, but the road will be the same. And it may still happen that others also...
But one thing is certain: you will at least come to it in your dreams. You will have to. The mind has certain eternal laws. Whatever man is forbidden, he falls into it. And the greatest misfortune that has befallen humanity is around sex. Around sex, so much whitewashing has been done in the human mind, the letters on that board have been written so loudly — Do not peek! — that all of humanity peeks into that very board and is ruined.
So many taboos on sex, so many prohibitions, so much absurdity and false propaganda — that in the human mind nothing seems to remain except sex.
It is the saints and sadhus who have made man sexualized, pornographic — and the day humanity understands this, the long line of saints will be proved such immense criminals that no account can measure it. These dangerous people are responsible for making man sexual... Sex itself is a natural phenomenon.
Sexuality is man’s invention. Desire is natural; kama is in all elements — but lustfulness, pornography, exists only in man. How did this lustfulness arise? It has been manufactured. It has been planted in man’s unconscious. Man has been stopped, forbidden, denied. Whatever we taboo, call bad, oppose, strip naked — without knowing it, we create juice in it. This is the trick for creating allure.
Print on a film poster: For adults only. Only for those above eighteen. And children under eighteen will show up with fake moustaches and beards.
A magazine is published: For men only! That magazine will be read by no one except women. Another says: For women only! It will be read only by men. Why? The word only is always an invitation.
Regarding sex, the human mind has become entirely extra-natural and perverted. And what is the cause of the perversion? The wall raised around sex. The effort to keep man ignorant about sex. The attempt to frighten him about it from the very first day.
No father tells his son anything about sex; no mother tells her daughter; no guru speaks to his disciple. And if children ask, sticks are raised from all sides: Be quiet! These are not matters for you to ask.
Why corrupt a child’s curiosity? Then children ask, investigate, but on wrong paths; they collect wrong information — and they live their whole lives with that wrong information.
But around truth, all eyes are shut.
Anatole France, the great writer and thinker, lay on his deathbed. A friend came to see him. He asked, Anatole, your last hour is near. Tell me, what is the most important thing you discovered in life? Anatole said, The most important? Come closer — I can say it only in your ear. The man leaned in. Anatole said nothing. He said... You understood. There is no need to speak.
Without speaking he said something — the very thing our world believes must be kept silent. But by becoming silent, facts do not change. And when facts are understood, there is no need to speak. Facts should be brought to light — facts should be knowable.
The sure-fire recipe for making man lustful is: do not let sex enter human understanding; keep him from knowing. In darkness, desire encircles his very life-breath. The second trick is: when desire engulfs you, push it down, suppress it. Across the whole world, suppression is growing — because people have not become free of desire.
In the West, a culture was born — a sensuous culture. At the core of Western culture is indulgence in the senses. Our pundits would be delighted to know that Kamadeva endorses Western culture — that it is based on the senses. But our culture too is not truly above the senses. The difference is small. Perhaps Kamadeva does not know; the West knows its own culture is sensuous. The East’s culture is hypocritical. Inside, sensuality; on the surface, saintliness. The reverse of sensuousness. Inside — hypocrisy; inside — the thief; inside — sex; on the lips — talk of Brahmacharya. Books on the ascetic life — inside, the same as in the West. On top — a deception.
And I hold this: the sensuous person may one day be free of the senses — because after becoming familiar with them, no reason remains to be confined there. But the hypocrite never becomes free of the senses. The hypocrite falls into so vicious a circle — after deceiving everyone and then deceiving himself... When another deceives you, you can recognize the deceit in a few days — because it comes from another. But when you deceive yourself, in this world nothing is harder to recognize. There is no other there — only you.
The hypocrite is the most distorted form of the human being. Yet the policy of repression gives him the greatest respect. Hypocrite means: inside, something else; but inside it has been pushed down and suppressed. Outside, something different is displayed. Frightened, he has one track for showing life and another for living it. He walks one path and talks about another. The front door of his house is one; behind, there is another door too.
I have heard: In a town, a Shakespeare play was being staged. Crowds of thousands watched. The whole village spoke of nothing else. People went to the village priest — the bishop, the archbishop — and told him, Ah, such a beautiful play we have never seen. The priest salivated. After all, a priest is also a man. But he cannot show his drool. His mouth watered to see the play. Yet he preached: Theatre is the road to hell. He shouted, You will rot in hell! What is there in this play? Your whole life is a play — watch some other play! People said, You are right. But the play is so marvelous that we are ready to go to hell — we will still see it.
The priest’s longing grew: This is too much! There must be something extraordinary in that play — people are ready to go to hell but will not stop watching. Many days he warned them, Do not see the play. They still went, ready for hell but not ready to drop the play. The play had more power than the priest — more than the fear of hell. And behind the theatre, in red ink, a note was posted: Kindly be advised, there is a back door — please come with joy.
When the last day came, all of London rushed toward the playhouse. The priest could no longer restrain himself. He wrote a note to the manager: I have a small request. I too wish to see the play. Do you have a back door at the theatre? When it is dark, I will come through the back door. Let me see the play, but let no one see me.
The manager’s reply was wonderful: Your Excellency, Reverend Sir, there is indeed a back door. In every city where we bring the theatre, we must have a back door — because respectable people never enter through the front. It is our duty to make special arrangements for the respectable. The door is there. You are welcome; no one will be able to see you. Whether God will see you, we do not know. It may be that there is no God. And as far as priests are concerned — priests know very well there is no God. If anyone on earth knows there is a God, it will not be the priest; the one who does business in the name of God will never move toward God’s truth — he is concerned with the business, not with God. So perhaps you know that God does not exist. Even so, one thing remains: others may not know — but you will still know that you came through the back door.
Who knows whether the priest went to watch? He surely must have. The back door exists for the hypocrite. The ordinary, healthy person is fine — from the ordinary personality we can rise higher. But to become a hypocrite — that is a very perverted circle; from there, we never rise beyond.
This is our country: we talk so much of Brahmacharya — but if you open up anyone’s skull, you will find nothing but sex. Even a seventy- or eighty-year-old man is not free. An eighty-year-old, if he sees a woman, his eyes enter inside her clothing.
What condition is this? Read the books of sadhus and sannyasins, listen to their discourses: under the pretext of calling woman the gate of hell, they discuss each limb of the female body with such naked detail that even film actors could not match it. They keep ledgers of the woman’s body! The taste is strange. The taste is there because perhaps the real reason for calling woman hell is that there is great repressed rage toward woman; an inner battle with woman is going on; within, woman keeps pursuing. The truth is: whoever runs from a fact of life — that fact will pursue him. If a woman runs from man, man will pursue her all her life. If a man runs from woman, woman will pursue him all his life.
I have heard: In Korea, one evening two monks were traveling near a river. Ahead walked an old monk; behind him, his young companion. At the riverbank — a mountain river with a swift current — a young girl stood, perhaps needing to cross, a stranger to the path, frightened. Dusk was falling; the sun was setting. The old monk, walking ahead, felt for a moment: give the girl a hand and help her cross. It was as if an explosion occurred inside him; as if all the repressed desire of thirty years spread in lurid pictures across his mind, as if his whole consciousness became a stage and a storm began to blow upon it. He panicked: What is this? Why did I think to take her hand in mine? How could I think such sinful thoughts? He closed his eyes and began to ford the river. The eyes were closed — but you know well, at times you too have closed your eyes. With open eyes a woman is never as beautiful as she becomes with closed eyes. With open eyes, woman is a formed body — bones, flesh, marrow walking. With closed eyes, the body turns to gold, it shimmers. In dreams there is no decay, no illness.
When a man falls in love with a woman — or a woman with a man — the real man or woman is not seen. What is seen is the dream that has formed within. Others cannot understand: Why has he gone mad behind this girl? She is ordinary. Ordinary for you; upon her he has saddled his dream. He sees his fantasy, not the girl.
As soon as the old monk closed his eyes, he was in trouble. With eyes open there was still some courage left, some chance: if needed, close them. But after closing them — what could he do now? He walked fast, breath quickened, the woman pursued him — the inner woman pursued him. The real girl likely never knew the old man was in turmoil because of her. But within him a woman had awakened — the woman he had suppressed for thirty years now awakened, taking the occasion of that girl.
Within a man’s psyche, a woman resides; within a woman’s psyche, a man. Man’s conscious mind is masculine; in the unconscious, the feminine is hidden. Woman’s conscious mind is feminine; in the unconscious, the masculine lies concealed. Seeing the man outside, the woman is attracted because her inner man awakens; that very man begins to appear outside. And if the woman lives with a man for long, the differences start to show. Then the trouble begins. Love lasts — marriage begins, and trouble follows. Because what was within — the inner image of the man — breaks coordination with the outer one. Then she realizes: this man was not the man of my longing; this woman was not the woman of my longing. Inside there is an image, and the search is for that image. If someone forces that image down, it does not die — it grows. It gathers such force that the day it bursts, there is an explosion in the whole psyche.
The old monk was terrified. Somehow he crossed. He ran. But the more he ran, the more the pressure mounted — because he was running due to the pressure. He ran faster, not even stopping. And then another worry: My young companion is behind — what if such wrong thoughts arise in his mind too? What if he takes the girl’s hand? The old are always worried about the young — that they may make the mistake we almost made. The young have a right to err; you too have erred. Have compassion — let them err too. Your father wished you would not err; his father wished the same; yet mistakes kept happening.
He looked back. The mistake had already been made! The young monk was carrying the girl on his shoulders. This was the limit. A mere thought of touching her hand had created such calamity — what must happen by carrying her on the shoulders! The old man went mad. What is happening?
On the far bank, the young monk set the girl down and continued on his way. Two miles later they reached the monastery gate. The old one had said nothing — heavy with anger, and beneath the anger, jealousy too. Without jealousy, anger does not arise — remember this. Jealousy was there. The youth had carried the girl upon his shoulders. How could the thought not arise in the old man: I could have carried her too — but I missed. Then anger: I restrained myself, and he committed the very mistake! Finally, standing on the steps, the old monk said, Listen! I cannot keep silent before the Master — why did you carry the girl on your shoulders?
The youth said, I carried her a long time ago — I set her down on the riverbank. The matter ended there. Are you still carrying her? You didn’t even lift her — yet you are still burdened. One may carry and be free; one may refuse to carry and yet bear the load forever. That is how life’s laws work.
Sex has mounted every man’s shoulders; it has covered his very life-breath. And we are teaching children sex — teaching sexuality — by our silence, by our denial. We are not teaching them freedom. The more you preach Brahmacharya, the more the child...
Today in India, it is difficult for a woman even to walk the street. For a girl to attend college is difficult. Somewhere... she will be pushed, somewhere pelted. And she cannot even speak of it — because such behavior has been accepted as normal. The cause is repression. The cause is ignorance regarding sex. The cause is the wrong attempt to push the mind down. We are not teaching the human mind how to be free.
Understand: whatever you push down inside will try to come out twenty-four hours a day. It will try in every form. You will write a poem — and what you suppressed will surface. A hundred out of a hundred and one poems concern sex. Read a hundred novels — a hundred and one concern sex. Make a film — there will be sex. Even to sell toothpaste, to sell soap, sex must be used. To sell a sari too, you must place a naked woman in front; without her, nothing moves. What does this mean? It means that what is suppressed within — every shopkeeper provokes it to sell his wares. I know: nobody goes to buy the sari — one goes to buy the woman.
Let the sari be bought — the woman will come by herself. Sell the sari from the back — put the woman in front.
Does anyone call dreams “dreams”? Dreams are dreams. But when you say, The world is maya — understand that within you, that very maya is pulling; it is binding your life-breath. Man denies only that which he secretly longs for. The tongue slips and says what the mind hides.
The tongue never errs. How can it? Whatever is hidden within sometimes slips out. Whenever something slips from the tongue, take note — it was hiding within; it belongs to the unconscious mind. Then from the tongue it will leak... it will leak out... but...
Nasruddin once... he went from one house to another; the mind never rests in the middle — from one extreme to the other it runs. If it stops in the middle, man is free of mind. He said, I made a mistake — from one extreme I swung to the other. Forgive me. Now I will not speak of clothes at all. For the man who cultivates restraint is very dangerous. Cultivated restraint is always false. There is another restraint that comes from understanding — you don’t have to cultivate it. But cultivated restraint is always dangerous.
He struck his own chest... entered a third house. He had sworn by God in his mind. And those who swear by God are very dangerous — because a man swears by God only when... Don’t talk of clothes, don’t talk of clothes — he kept repeating inwardly. He heard nothing of what others said; he only heard inside, People are asking, Whose clothes are these? He kept saying within: Not a word about clothes... not a word about clothes... whoever the clothes belong to, what is it to me? What has happened to the poor fellow? What has happened to all humanity? Don’t talk of sex, don’t talk of sex — and then it is sex, sex everywhere.
What do I want to say through this discussion? If the coming man in this country is to be healthy, serene, powerful, intelligent — then in place of the repression, condemnation, and abuse of sex that we have carried till now, bring understanding of sex. Bring intelligence toward sex, knowledge — teach every child the art of living with awareness so that he can fully know his inner drives, recognize them, not be frightened of them, not run from them, not fight with them — but know them. Why do I emphasize knowing? Because my experience is: the very drive we know rightly becomes quiet. If a person truly knows his anger, anger subsides. Try it — become aware while anger arises: Know that anger is coming — anger is here — and see, it will dissolve. Know and understand sex; then it will become an ordinary part of life. It will not remain a perversion. It will not grip you for twenty-four hours. The more ordinary it becomes, the more it is known and understood, the more one begins to rise above it.
And when the energy of sex begins to rise upward within, the door of the Divine opens in that person’s life. Man has no other power besides sex. Apart from semen, virya, man has no other energy. When that very energy, with understanding, starts moving upward, it opens the doors of the Divine, it opens the mysteries of life. But wrong education, wrong conditioning, wrong civilization have shut all the doors of man’s energy — all around — as if... locked it up. Within each person there is an explosion of sexual energy — not sublimation of sex, not transformation... an explosion. Man is breaking apart, bit by bit.
Of those confined in madhouses, scientists say ninety percent are mad only because of sexual explosion. And psychologists add: those who are not in madhouses — let them not think they are not mad. There are two kinds of madmen in the world: those inside asylums and those outside. There are two kinds. There is no fundamental difference between them — not of kind, only of degree. We are a little less mad; they are a little more. We are mad enough to somehow manage our affairs; they are so mad that it has become difficult to manage. They crossed to the other side of one hundred degrees — water turned to steam; we slipped just this side of ninety-nine. That is all.
If you sit in a room, close the door, lock it, and for ten minutes write honestly on a piece of paper whatever runs in your mind — exactly as it runs — you will not be able to show that paper even to your closest friend, your brother, your father. He will be terrified: Has your mind gone insane? Is this what runs in your head? Come — let’s get treatment...
Look inside at what is running — and you will see a madman already there. A slight push — anyone can go mad. The whole civilization has come close to madness. Why? Because the energy of sex has been distorted. If we want to make man healthy, peaceful, and blissful, drop ill will toward sex. Every child should be given understanding about sex. He should not even get the idea that it is something dirty, a gate to hell, a sin. He should know it is a part of life. In the flower hides the seed — that is sex. The seed within you will... fall into earth and...
We have heard the call of love — how happy we become hearing it! It is not the cry of the papiha; it is the call of sex. It calls to its beloved — that call is attraction. If we knew this, we would not kill the papiha...
Know this: all of life’s creation arises from sex — all creation. The movement of life flows from it. Paramatma has placed sex at the core of creation — and you are condemning it, abusing it. In abusing it, you abuse the growth of life itself. No — understand it, recognize it, know it. Make a conscious effort to raise that energy upwards. One day, Brahmacharya will bear fruit in life. Brahmacharya does not flower through opposition to sex; it flowers through understanding sex.
I have said a few small things. Reflect on them. If what I say feels right, accept it. It is not good that anyone believe me just because I say so. Listen in friendship. Everything I say may be wrong. Think, understand, inquire — perhaps some truth will be seen in it. And if a truth is seen anywhere, it will be your own. One’s own truth liberates. One’s own truth leads man to life’s beauty, dignity, and glory.
May Paramatma grant that the energy hidden within you brings you one day to the very door of the Divine — not to the gates of the madhouse.
For listening to my words with such love and quietude, I am deeply obliged. In the end, I bow to the Paramatma seated within all. Please accept my pranam.
Osho's Commentary
There is a strange law of the human mind. Because it has not been understood, humanity has remained in great distress up to now. The law is this: forbid the mind to go in a certain direction — and the mind starts moving exactly there. Deny the mind something — and it becomes attracted to it. Fight the mind about anything — and the mind is compelled to lose to that very thing. The Law of Reverse Effect — in the realm of mind, outcomes turn upside down. This law needs to be understood very deeply.
Freud once went strolling with his wife in a garden. Their little son was with them. They wandered, sat, talked. When closing time came and they reached the gate, they realized their son had not been with them for a long while. Freud’s wife panicked. The gates were being shut; the gardeners were closing up. It was a big garden. Where had the boy gone? In her panic she cried, Where should I search?
Freud said, First let me ask you one thing: did you forbid your son to go anywhere? If you did, and if your boy has even a little intelligence, then in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases he will be exactly where he was forbidden to go.
His wife said, Yes — I told him not to go near the fountain.
Freud said, Come. If your son is unintelligent, he may be anywhere; if he has a little intelligence, we will find him at the fountain. They went — and there he was, sitting with his legs dangling, playing with the water.
His wife was amazed. How did you know he would be at the fountain?
Freud said, It’s a simple law of the mind. Wherever you prohibit, the mind goes. And not only your son — the whole of humanity has gone where man was told not to go.
Yet this little sutra has not been understood to this day. And the very people we call virtuous, respectable, saints — they have been the ones to push humanity into evil; this too has not been seen. Those we named Mahatmas are the very ones sitting on top of man’s true soul, suffocating it — this has not been understood. To understand this is immensely beneficial.
If, outside this passage, a board were hung that read: Peeping inside is forbidden — do you think respectable people could be found in Ahmedabad who would pass without peeking? Yes, a few might. Some respectable ones may turn their eyes the other way and pass. But while the eyes look elsewhere, the mind will remain glued to the board.
We do not see only with straight eyes; we also see with sidelong glances. And when seen directly, we are freed of certain things; when seen from the corner of the eye, those very things pursue us, and freedom from them becomes impossible.
Some may even avoid looking at the board out of fear — because our life and our so-called respectability stand not on inner worth, but on the fear of others’ eyes. Others are watching: a respectable man peeping behind a board that says Peeping forbidden! So from fear some will pass without peeking. But they will fall into great difficulty. They will reach the shop, the temple, the office — but their minds will circle around that board. The day will become arduous, living will become difficult. The board will call again and again: Come and peek! By evening, as darkness gathers, more and more people will find some excuse to pass by that road. The pretext may be anything, but the road will be the same. And it may still happen that others also...
But one thing is certain: you will at least come to it in your dreams. You will have to. The mind has certain eternal laws. Whatever man is forbidden, he falls into it. And the greatest misfortune that has befallen humanity is around sex. Around sex, so much whitewashing has been done in the human mind, the letters on that board have been written so loudly — Do not peek! — that all of humanity peeks into that very board and is ruined.
So many taboos on sex, so many prohibitions, so much absurdity and false propaganda — that in the human mind nothing seems to remain except sex.
It is the saints and sadhus who have made man sexualized, pornographic — and the day humanity understands this, the long line of saints will be proved such immense criminals that no account can measure it. These dangerous people are responsible for making man sexual... Sex itself is a natural phenomenon.
Sexuality is man’s invention. Desire is natural; kama is in all elements — but lustfulness, pornography, exists only in man. How did this lustfulness arise? It has been manufactured. It has been planted in man’s unconscious. Man has been stopped, forbidden, denied. Whatever we taboo, call bad, oppose, strip naked — without knowing it, we create juice in it. This is the trick for creating allure.
Print on a film poster: For adults only. Only for those above eighteen. And children under eighteen will show up with fake moustaches and beards.
A magazine is published: For men only! That magazine will be read by no one except women. Another says: For women only! It will be read only by men. Why? The word only is always an invitation.
Regarding sex, the human mind has become entirely extra-natural and perverted. And what is the cause of the perversion? The wall raised around sex. The effort to keep man ignorant about sex. The attempt to frighten him about it from the very first day.
No father tells his son anything about sex; no mother tells her daughter; no guru speaks to his disciple. And if children ask, sticks are raised from all sides: Be quiet! These are not matters for you to ask.
Why corrupt a child’s curiosity? Then children ask, investigate, but on wrong paths; they collect wrong information — and they live their whole lives with that wrong information.
But around truth, all eyes are shut.
Anatole France, the great writer and thinker, lay on his deathbed. A friend came to see him. He asked, Anatole, your last hour is near. Tell me, what is the most important thing you discovered in life? Anatole said, The most important? Come closer — I can say it only in your ear. The man leaned in. Anatole said nothing. He said... You understood. There is no need to speak.
Without speaking he said something — the very thing our world believes must be kept silent. But by becoming silent, facts do not change. And when facts are understood, there is no need to speak. Facts should be brought to light — facts should be knowable.
The sure-fire recipe for making man lustful is: do not let sex enter human understanding; keep him from knowing. In darkness, desire encircles his very life-breath. The second trick is: when desire engulfs you, push it down, suppress it. Across the whole world, suppression is growing — because people have not become free of desire.
In the West, a culture was born — a sensuous culture. At the core of Western culture is indulgence in the senses. Our pundits would be delighted to know that Kamadeva endorses Western culture — that it is based on the senses. But our culture too is not truly above the senses. The difference is small. Perhaps Kamadeva does not know; the West knows its own culture is sensuous. The East’s culture is hypocritical. Inside, sensuality; on the surface, saintliness. The reverse of sensuousness. Inside — hypocrisy; inside — the thief; inside — sex; on the lips — talk of Brahmacharya. Books on the ascetic life — inside, the same as in the West. On top — a deception.
And I hold this: the sensuous person may one day be free of the senses — because after becoming familiar with them, no reason remains to be confined there. But the hypocrite never becomes free of the senses. The hypocrite falls into so vicious a circle — after deceiving everyone and then deceiving himself... When another deceives you, you can recognize the deceit in a few days — because it comes from another. But when you deceive yourself, in this world nothing is harder to recognize. There is no other there — only you.
The hypocrite is the most distorted form of the human being. Yet the policy of repression gives him the greatest respect. Hypocrite means: inside, something else; but inside it has been pushed down and suppressed. Outside, something different is displayed. Frightened, he has one track for showing life and another for living it. He walks one path and talks about another. The front door of his house is one; behind, there is another door too.
I have heard: In a town, a Shakespeare play was being staged. Crowds of thousands watched. The whole village spoke of nothing else. People went to the village priest — the bishop, the archbishop — and told him, Ah, such a beautiful play we have never seen. The priest salivated. After all, a priest is also a man. But he cannot show his drool. His mouth watered to see the play. Yet he preached: Theatre is the road to hell. He shouted, You will rot in hell! What is there in this play? Your whole life is a play — watch some other play! People said, You are right. But the play is so marvelous that we are ready to go to hell — we will still see it.
The priest’s longing grew: This is too much! There must be something extraordinary in that play — people are ready to go to hell but will not stop watching. Many days he warned them, Do not see the play. They still went, ready for hell but not ready to drop the play. The play had more power than the priest — more than the fear of hell. And behind the theatre, in red ink, a note was posted: Kindly be advised, there is a back door — please come with joy.
When the last day came, all of London rushed toward the playhouse. The priest could no longer restrain himself. He wrote a note to the manager: I have a small request. I too wish to see the play. Do you have a back door at the theatre? When it is dark, I will come through the back door. Let me see the play, but let no one see me.
The manager’s reply was wonderful: Your Excellency, Reverend Sir, there is indeed a back door. In every city where we bring the theatre, we must have a back door — because respectable people never enter through the front. It is our duty to make special arrangements for the respectable. The door is there. You are welcome; no one will be able to see you. Whether God will see you, we do not know. It may be that there is no God. And as far as priests are concerned — priests know very well there is no God. If anyone on earth knows there is a God, it will not be the priest; the one who does business in the name of God will never move toward God’s truth — he is concerned with the business, not with God. So perhaps you know that God does not exist. Even so, one thing remains: others may not know — but you will still know that you came through the back door.
Who knows whether the priest went to watch? He surely must have. The back door exists for the hypocrite. The ordinary, healthy person is fine — from the ordinary personality we can rise higher. But to become a hypocrite — that is a very perverted circle; from there, we never rise beyond.
This is our country: we talk so much of Brahmacharya — but if you open up anyone’s skull, you will find nothing but sex. Even a seventy- or eighty-year-old man is not free. An eighty-year-old, if he sees a woman, his eyes enter inside her clothing.
What condition is this? Read the books of sadhus and sannyasins, listen to their discourses: under the pretext of calling woman the gate of hell, they discuss each limb of the female body with such naked detail that even film actors could not match it. They keep ledgers of the woman’s body! The taste is strange. The taste is there because perhaps the real reason for calling woman hell is that there is great repressed rage toward woman; an inner battle with woman is going on; within, woman keeps pursuing. The truth is: whoever runs from a fact of life — that fact will pursue him. If a woman runs from man, man will pursue her all her life. If a man runs from woman, woman will pursue him all his life.
I have heard: In Korea, one evening two monks were traveling near a river. Ahead walked an old monk; behind him, his young companion. At the riverbank — a mountain river with a swift current — a young girl stood, perhaps needing to cross, a stranger to the path, frightened. Dusk was falling; the sun was setting. The old monk, walking ahead, felt for a moment: give the girl a hand and help her cross. It was as if an explosion occurred inside him; as if all the repressed desire of thirty years spread in lurid pictures across his mind, as if his whole consciousness became a stage and a storm began to blow upon it. He panicked: What is this? Why did I think to take her hand in mine? How could I think such sinful thoughts? He closed his eyes and began to ford the river. The eyes were closed — but you know well, at times you too have closed your eyes. With open eyes a woman is never as beautiful as she becomes with closed eyes. With open eyes, woman is a formed body — bones, flesh, marrow walking. With closed eyes, the body turns to gold, it shimmers. In dreams there is no decay, no illness.
When a man falls in love with a woman — or a woman with a man — the real man or woman is not seen. What is seen is the dream that has formed within. Others cannot understand: Why has he gone mad behind this girl? She is ordinary. Ordinary for you; upon her he has saddled his dream. He sees his fantasy, not the girl.
As soon as the old monk closed his eyes, he was in trouble. With eyes open there was still some courage left, some chance: if needed, close them. But after closing them — what could he do now? He walked fast, breath quickened, the woman pursued him — the inner woman pursued him. The real girl likely never knew the old man was in turmoil because of her. But within him a woman had awakened — the woman he had suppressed for thirty years now awakened, taking the occasion of that girl.
Within a man’s psyche, a woman resides; within a woman’s psyche, a man. Man’s conscious mind is masculine; in the unconscious, the feminine is hidden. Woman’s conscious mind is feminine; in the unconscious, the masculine lies concealed. Seeing the man outside, the woman is attracted because her inner man awakens; that very man begins to appear outside. And if the woman lives with a man for long, the differences start to show. Then the trouble begins. Love lasts — marriage begins, and trouble follows. Because what was within — the inner image of the man — breaks coordination with the outer one. Then she realizes: this man was not the man of my longing; this woman was not the woman of my longing. Inside there is an image, and the search is for that image. If someone forces that image down, it does not die — it grows. It gathers such force that the day it bursts, there is an explosion in the whole psyche.
The old monk was terrified. Somehow he crossed. He ran. But the more he ran, the more the pressure mounted — because he was running due to the pressure. He ran faster, not even stopping. And then another worry: My young companion is behind — what if such wrong thoughts arise in his mind too? What if he takes the girl’s hand? The old are always worried about the young — that they may make the mistake we almost made. The young have a right to err; you too have erred. Have compassion — let them err too. Your father wished you would not err; his father wished the same; yet mistakes kept happening.
He looked back. The mistake had already been made! The young monk was carrying the girl on his shoulders. This was the limit. A mere thought of touching her hand had created such calamity — what must happen by carrying her on the shoulders! The old man went mad. What is happening?
On the far bank, the young monk set the girl down and continued on his way. Two miles later they reached the monastery gate. The old one had said nothing — heavy with anger, and beneath the anger, jealousy too. Without jealousy, anger does not arise — remember this. Jealousy was there. The youth had carried the girl upon his shoulders. How could the thought not arise in the old man: I could have carried her too — but I missed. Then anger: I restrained myself, and he committed the very mistake! Finally, standing on the steps, the old monk said, Listen! I cannot keep silent before the Master — why did you carry the girl on your shoulders?
The youth said, I carried her a long time ago — I set her down on the riverbank. The matter ended there. Are you still carrying her? You didn’t even lift her — yet you are still burdened. One may carry and be free; one may refuse to carry and yet bear the load forever. That is how life’s laws work.
Sex has mounted every man’s shoulders; it has covered his very life-breath. And we are teaching children sex — teaching sexuality — by our silence, by our denial. We are not teaching them freedom. The more you preach Brahmacharya, the more the child...
Today in India, it is difficult for a woman even to walk the street. For a girl to attend college is difficult. Somewhere... she will be pushed, somewhere pelted. And she cannot even speak of it — because such behavior has been accepted as normal. The cause is repression. The cause is ignorance regarding sex. The cause is the wrong attempt to push the mind down. We are not teaching the human mind how to be free.
Understand: whatever you push down inside will try to come out twenty-four hours a day. It will try in every form. You will write a poem — and what you suppressed will surface. A hundred out of a hundred and one poems concern sex. Read a hundred novels — a hundred and one concern sex. Make a film — there will be sex. Even to sell toothpaste, to sell soap, sex must be used. To sell a sari too, you must place a naked woman in front; without her, nothing moves. What does this mean? It means that what is suppressed within — every shopkeeper provokes it to sell his wares. I know: nobody goes to buy the sari — one goes to buy the woman.
Let the sari be bought — the woman will come by herself. Sell the sari from the back — put the woman in front.
Does anyone call dreams “dreams”? Dreams are dreams. But when you say, The world is maya — understand that within you, that very maya is pulling; it is binding your life-breath. Man denies only that which he secretly longs for. The tongue slips and says what the mind hides.
The tongue never errs. How can it? Whatever is hidden within sometimes slips out. Whenever something slips from the tongue, take note — it was hiding within; it belongs to the unconscious mind. Then from the tongue it will leak... it will leak out... but...
Nasruddin once... he went from one house to another; the mind never rests in the middle — from one extreme to the other it runs. If it stops in the middle, man is free of mind. He said, I made a mistake — from one extreme I swung to the other. Forgive me. Now I will not speak of clothes at all. For the man who cultivates restraint is very dangerous. Cultivated restraint is always false. There is another restraint that comes from understanding — you don’t have to cultivate it. But cultivated restraint is always dangerous.
He struck his own chest... entered a third house. He had sworn by God in his mind. And those who swear by God are very dangerous — because a man swears by God only when... Don’t talk of clothes, don’t talk of clothes — he kept repeating inwardly. He heard nothing of what others said; he only heard inside, People are asking, Whose clothes are these? He kept saying within: Not a word about clothes... not a word about clothes... whoever the clothes belong to, what is it to me? What has happened to the poor fellow? What has happened to all humanity? Don’t talk of sex, don’t talk of sex — and then it is sex, sex everywhere.
What do I want to say through this discussion? If the coming man in this country is to be healthy, serene, powerful, intelligent — then in place of the repression, condemnation, and abuse of sex that we have carried till now, bring understanding of sex. Bring intelligence toward sex, knowledge — teach every child the art of living with awareness so that he can fully know his inner drives, recognize them, not be frightened of them, not run from them, not fight with them — but know them. Why do I emphasize knowing? Because my experience is: the very drive we know rightly becomes quiet. If a person truly knows his anger, anger subsides. Try it — become aware while anger arises: Know that anger is coming — anger is here — and see, it will dissolve. Know and understand sex; then it will become an ordinary part of life. It will not remain a perversion. It will not grip you for twenty-four hours. The more ordinary it becomes, the more it is known and understood, the more one begins to rise above it.
And when the energy of sex begins to rise upward within, the door of the Divine opens in that person’s life. Man has no other power besides sex. Apart from semen, virya, man has no other energy. When that very energy, with understanding, starts moving upward, it opens the doors of the Divine, it opens the mysteries of life. But wrong education, wrong conditioning, wrong civilization have shut all the doors of man’s energy — all around — as if... locked it up. Within each person there is an explosion of sexual energy — not sublimation of sex, not transformation... an explosion. Man is breaking apart, bit by bit.
Of those confined in madhouses, scientists say ninety percent are mad only because of sexual explosion. And psychologists add: those who are not in madhouses — let them not think they are not mad. There are two kinds of madmen in the world: those inside asylums and those outside. There are two kinds. There is no fundamental difference between them — not of kind, only of degree. We are a little less mad; they are a little more. We are mad enough to somehow manage our affairs; they are so mad that it has become difficult to manage. They crossed to the other side of one hundred degrees — water turned to steam; we slipped just this side of ninety-nine. That is all.
If you sit in a room, close the door, lock it, and for ten minutes write honestly on a piece of paper whatever runs in your mind — exactly as it runs — you will not be able to show that paper even to your closest friend, your brother, your father. He will be terrified: Has your mind gone insane? Is this what runs in your head? Come — let’s get treatment...
Look inside at what is running — and you will see a madman already there. A slight push — anyone can go mad. The whole civilization has come close to madness. Why? Because the energy of sex has been distorted. If we want to make man healthy, peaceful, and blissful, drop ill will toward sex. Every child should be given understanding about sex. He should not even get the idea that it is something dirty, a gate to hell, a sin. He should know it is a part of life. In the flower hides the seed — that is sex. The seed within you will... fall into earth and...
We have heard the call of love — how happy we become hearing it! It is not the cry of the papiha; it is the call of sex. It calls to its beloved — that call is attraction. If we knew this, we would not kill the papiha...
Know this: all of life’s creation arises from sex — all creation. The movement of life flows from it. Paramatma has placed sex at the core of creation — and you are condemning it, abusing it. In abusing it, you abuse the growth of life itself. No — understand it, recognize it, know it. Make a conscious effort to raise that energy upwards. One day, Brahmacharya will bear fruit in life. Brahmacharya does not flower through opposition to sex; it flowers through understanding sex.
I have said a few small things. Reflect on them. If what I say feels right, accept it. It is not good that anyone believe me just because I say so. Listen in friendship. Everything I say may be wrong. Think, understand, inquire — perhaps some truth will be seen in it. And if a truth is seen anywhere, it will be your own. One’s own truth liberates. One’s own truth leads man to life’s beauty, dignity, and glory.
May Paramatma grant that the energy hidden within you brings you one day to the very door of the Divine — not to the gates of the madhouse.
For listening to my words with such love and quietude, I am deeply obliged. In the end, I bow to the Paramatma seated within all. Please accept my pranam.