Sambhog Se Samadhi Ki Oar #4

To that sister, if she is present, I want to say: neither Vinoba nor I nor anyone can come to celibacy without experience—whether that experience belongs to this life or to a past life. One who attains to celibacy in this life does so on the basis of deep experiences of union in past lives, and on no other basis. There is no other way.

But if in a past life someone has had a deep experience of union, then he will be born in this life already free of sex. On the pathway of his imagination, sex will never stand in the way. He may even be amazed looking at others: What is this? Why are people mad, crazed? He will find it difficult even to keep track of who is a woman and who is a man, to make that distinction and maintain that distance.

But if someone thinks that without deep experience one can be a lifelong celibate, he will not be a celibate—he will simply go mad. Those who try to impose celibacy by force are merely unbalanced, and they reach nowhere. Celibacy cannot be imposed. It is a consequence of experience; it is the fruit of a profound experience—and that experience is of sexual union. If that experience happens even once, then one is freed from sex for the journey into endless life.

Then I said two things for deepening: let the breath become relaxed—so relaxed that it is as if it is not moving at all; and let the attention, the whole focus, be near the ajna chakra, at the point between the two eyes. The nearer the attention is to the brain, the more the depth of union will increase on its own. And the more relaxed the breathing, the longer the duration will become. And for the first time you will experience that the human mind is not attracted to sex as such; in the human mind the attraction is toward samadhi. And once a glimpse of that comes—once lightning flashes and, in the dark, the path is seen—then you can set out upon it.

A man sits in a filthy house. The walls are dark and smeared with soot. The house is full of stench. Yet he can open a window. Standing at that dirty window he can still see the distant sky, the stars, the sun, the birds in flight. Then there will be no difficulty in stepping outside the house. Once he has seen that outside there is a pristine sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, birds in flight, trees swaying in the breeze and the fragrance of flowers—freedom—then he will no longer consent to sit in dark, smoky, damp, foul-smelling chambers; he will step out. The day a person has even the tiniest taste of samadhi within sexual union, that very day the dirty house of sex, those dark walls, become meaningless, and he steps outside.

But you must understand: ordinarily we are born inside that house whose walls are shut, whose surfaces are blackened with darkness, where there is stench and foul odor. And within that very house the first experience of the outside must occur; only then can we step out and leave it behind. The person who never opens the window of that house, and instead sits in a corner with eyes closed saying, I will not look at this filthy house, whether he looks or not, he is inside the foul house and will remain inside.

Those you call celibates—the so-called, forcibly imposed celibates—are as much inside the house of sex as any ordinary person. They sit with eyes closed; you sit with eyes open—that is the only difference. What you do with open eyes, they do inside with closed eyes. What you do with the body, they do with the mind. There is no difference.

Therefore I say: drop your ill will toward sex. Make an effort to understand, to experiment, and give sex the status of something sacred.

I have given two sutras. A third requirement is a certain inner mood when approaching union—the same reverent mood with which one approaches a temple. Because in the moment of sexual union we are closest to the Divine. That is precisely why in sex the Divine performs the act of creation and gives birth to new life. We are nearest to the Creator; in the experience of sex we stand closest to the Source. That is why we become a passage, and a new life descends through us and sets out on its journey. We become givers of birth. Why? Because that state is nearest to the Creator. If we go to sex with purity and with prayer, we can have a glimpse of the Divine.

But we go to sex with disgust, with ill will, with condemnation. Hence walls arise, and there the Divine is not experienced.

Approach sex as you would a temple. See the wife as the Beloved, as the Lord; see the husband as the Divine. Never approach sex in dirtiness, in anger, in harshness, in hatred, in jealousy, in envy, in moments of worry. What in fact happens is the opposite: the more a person is anxious, troubled, filled with anger, frightened, in anguish, the more he runs toward sex. A blissful person does not go to sex; a miserable person goes toward sex because he sees in it a chance to forget his misery.

But remember, when you go in sorrow, in anxiety, depressed, defeated, in rage, after quarrels—then you will never attain that deep experience of sex for which your soul is thirsty. The glimpse of samadhi will not be found there. And yet it is this very opposite that commonly happens.

My prayer is: when you are joyous, when you are in love, when you are exuberant, when your breath is prayerful—when it feels today that the heart is filled with peace, joy, and gratitude—only then is the moment; only then approach sexual union. Such a person attains to samadhi within sex. And if even a single ray of samadhi is received once, one becomes free of sex forever and begins to move toward samadhi.

The meeting of woman and man carries a very profound meaning. In the union of man and woman, for the first time the ego cracks and we meet someone.

When a child comes out of the mother's womb, day and night there is only one thing in his being—just as when you uproot a tree from the earth, the whole tree longs and writhes to be joined back to the soil, because only in connection with the earth did it receive prana, sap, life, vitality. Uprooted, all its roots cry out: send me back into the ground! Its whole being cries: send me back into the earth! It has been torn away, uprooted.

As soon as a human being comes out of the mother's womb, he becomes uprooted. In a sense he is broken off from life and the world. Now his entire call and aspiration is to be joined back to the world, to life, to existence. The name of that call is the thirst for love.

What else does love mean? Every person wants to receive love and to love. What does it mean? It means: I have been broken, isolated, separated—I long to be rejoined to life.

But the deepest experience of this rejoining comes to human beings in sexual experience, to man and woman. It is the first experience of being connected. And the person who understands this experience of connection in the sense of love’s thirst and the aspiration to unite, that person can soon come to another kind of union as well.

The yogi unites, the seeker unites, the saint unites, the one in samadhi unites; and the sexually loving person also unites.
- In sexual union, two persons connect. One person joins to another person and becomes one.
- In samadhi, an individual connects with the Total and becomes one.

Sexual union is a meeting between two persons. Samadhi is the meeting between one person and the infinite.

Naturally, the meeting of two persons can last only for a moment. The meeting of one person with the infinite can be for eternity. Both persons are limited; their meeting cannot be limitless. This is the pain, the suffering of all marriage, of all love—that the one with whom we want to unite, even with them we cannot unite forever. We meet for a moment, and then distances arise. Distances hurt, distances cause anguish, and continuously two lovers remain troubled in this suffering: why is there distance? Then slowly everything begins to appear as if the other is maintaining the distance. Hence anger toward the other begins to arise.

But those who know will say: two persons are unavoidably two distinct individuals. They can, by effort, unite for a moment, but not forever. This is the pain and suffering of lovers—that a constant struggle arises. With the very one we love, struggle arises; tension, restlessness, and hatred arise. It begins to seem that the one I want to meet is perhaps unwilling; therefore the meeting does not consummate.

But in this there is no fault of the persons. Two individuals cannot meet on an eternal plane; they can meet for a moment. If eternal union is desired, it can be with God, with the whole of existence.

Those who descend to the depths of sex come to know: if the joy of meeting for a single moment is so great, how immeasurable will be the joy of uniting for eternity! It becomes impossible to calculate. If the experience of a momentary meeting is so astonishing, what will be the experience of uniting with the infinite—what kind of experience will that be? It is like a lamp burning in a room; from that lamp we try to estimate how many lamps are burning in the light of the sun. It becomes very difficult to reckon. A lamp is a very small thing; the sun is vast. The sun is sixty thousand times larger than the earth; even being a hundred million miles away, it still warms and scorches us. How can we weigh such a great sun against a tiny lamp?

And yet, from a lamp you can measure the sun; for the lamp is finite and the sun is also finite. If a lamp has one candle of light, the sun will have billions upon billions of candlepower; still, a limit can be computed. But the joy in sex and the bliss in samadhi still cannot be measured against each other. For sex is the extremely momentary meeting of two small individuals, and samadhi is the drop merging into the infinite ocean. That cannot be measured by any means. There is no way to gauge how much that will be.

Therefore when That is attained—when That becomes available—then where is sex? where is union? where is desire? Once the infinite is found, how can one still think of chasing a momentary pleasure? Then that so-called pleasure begins to look like suffering. It seems like madness. It seems like a waste of energy. And celibacy flowers of its own accord.

But between sex and samadhi there is a bridge, a pathway, a journey. Samadhi is the final edge that disappears into the sky; sex is the first rung of the ladder. Those who turn against this first rung do not move ahead—that I want to tell you. Those who begin to deny this first rung cannot place their foot upon the second—that also I want to tell you. Even upon this first rung, one must place one’s foot with experience, understanding, and awareness. Not in order to remain there, but so that, using it, one can go beyond.

Yet an amazing accident has happened with humanity. As I said, it has turned against the first rung and wants to reach the last! It does not even have experience of the lamp, yet it longs for the sun.

This can never be. The lamp given by nature—first, its light must be understood. That slight light which lives for a moment and is blown out by the slightest breeze—one must first know it. So that there can arise a longing for the sun, so that steps can be taken toward the sun, so that within can be born the thirst, the discontent, the aspiration for the sun.

From the small experience of music one can move toward the supreme music. From a tiny experience of light one can move toward the infinite light. To know a single drop is the first step toward knowing the entire ocean. By knowing the smallest atom, we came to know all the power of matter.

Sex is a small atom given freely by nature to man. But we fail to know it. We live with eyes closed somehow, with our back turned somehow. There is no acceptance of it in our minds, no yes, no method in our hands to know it joyfully, with wonder, and to enter into it consciously.

As I said, the day man comes to know this method, that day we will be able to create a different kind of human being.

In this context I want to tell you: woman and man are two opposite poles of electricity—positive and negative, the two terminals. From their meeting a music is created; the full circuit of energy is completed.

I also want to tell you: as I said, if in depth and for a long time intercourse becomes still—if a woman and man can remain in union beyond half an hour—then around both a ring of light, a halo, begins to form. When their energies meet totally, even in the surrounding darkness a glow becomes visible. Some extraordinary experimenters have worked in this direction and even taken photographs. The couple to whom that energy-experience becomes available goes beyond sex forever.

But this is not our experience. And such statements may sound strange—that this is not in our experience. If it is not, then it means you must think again, look again, and begin life—at least sexual life—from ABC once more, in order to understand and to live it with awareness.

My own understanding is this, my own conception is this: a Mahavira or a Buddha or Christ or Krishna do not happen accidentally. They are the result of the complete union of two persons. The deeper the union, the more wondrous the offspring that is born. The more incomplete the union, the more the offspring will be crude and downtrodden.

Today the level of humanity is falling day by day. People say morality has deteriorated, therefore the level is falling. People say the dark age has come, therefore the level is falling. Wrong—futile, pointless talk. Only one thing has changed: the level of man’s sex has fallen. Man has lost the sacredness of sex. Man has lost the scientificness of sex, its simplicity and naturalness. Man’s sex has become forced, a nightmare, a disturbing dream. Sex has taken on a violent character. It is no longer a loving act; it is not a holy and peaceful act; it is not a meditative act. Therefore man will continue to fall.

If an artist creates something—a sculpture—and the artist is intoxicated, can you expect a beautiful statue to come? If a dancer is dancing, filled with anger, restless, anxious, do you expect the dance to be beautiful?

Whatever we do depends on the state we are in. And the most neglected thing is sex, intercourse. And the great surprise is that the whole journey of life proceeds from that very union! New children, new souls, enter the world from there!

Perhaps you do not know: sex is a situation in which a soul flying in the sky understands its suitable context and enters. You merely create an opportunity. You are not the creators of the child; you only provide a chance. Whichever soul finds that opportunity necessary, useful, meaningful—that soul enters.

If you create a sickly opportunity—if you are in anger, sorrow, pain, anxiety—then the soul that will descend can be only of that plane, not of a higher plane. For the call of superior souls, there must be a superior opportunity for union; then superior souls are born and life rises upward.

Therefore I said: the day man becomes adept in the complete science of sex, the day we can tell and explain to children and to the entire world all matters of this art and science, that day we will be able to create a totally new human being—what Nietzsche called the superman, what Aurobindo called the overman, what can be called a great soul. Such children, such offspring, such a world can be created. And until we create such a world, there can be no peace on earth; wars will not stop, nor hatred, nor injustice, nor immorality, nor adultery, nor will this darkness of life cease. Let politicians shout themselves hoarse...

(A light drizzle begins; some movement among the audience.)
Do not worry; five minutes of rain will make no difference. Close your umbrellas! Because others do not have umbrellas; it would be very irreligious if a few opened theirs. Close them! Had everyone had umbrellas, it would be fine. Others do not, and if you open yours and sit, how tasteless it will be—how uncultured. Close them! I, certainly—there is a roof above me—so for as long as you sit in the rain, after the meeting I will stand in the rain that long.

...Wars will not end, unrest will not end, violence will not end, jealousy will not end. How many days have passed? Ten thousand years! The prophets, tirthankaras, avatars of humanity have been explaining: do not fight, do not practice violence, do not be angry. But no one ever listened. Those who told us not to be violent, not to be angry—we hung them on the cross. That was the result of their teaching.

Gandhi taught us: love, become one! We shot him. That is the total result of his teaching. All the great men of the world have lost—understand this. They have failed. No value has triumphed till today; all values have been defeated, all have failed. Even the noblest callers, the best among men, lost and were gone; and man continued daily to move into darkness and hell.

Does this not show that there is some fundamental error in our teachings? Man is restless because he is born into restlessness. He carries the germs of unrest. In the depths of his being there is the disease of turmoil. On the very first day of birth he is born carrying sorrow and pain. In the first moments, the whole pattern of his life is created.

Therefore Buddha will be defeated, Mahavira will be defeated, Krishna will be defeated, Christ will be defeated. They have been defeated. Out of politeness we may say they have not, but they have. And man has deteriorated day by day. After so much preaching of nonviolence, we moved from knives to atomic and hydrogen bombs. Is this the success of the teaching of nonviolence?

In the first world war we killed thirty million people. After that—after speaking of peace and love—during the second we killed seventy-five million. And even now, from Bertrand Russell to Vinoba, everyone keeps shouting: we need peace, we need peace—and we are preparing for a third world war. And the third will make the second look like a children’s game.

Someone asked Einstein: what will happen in the third world war? Einstein said: nothing definite can be said about the third, but about the fourth I can say something. The questioners said: strange! If you cannot say about the third, what can you say about the fourth? Einstein replied: one thing is certain about the fourth—there will never be a fourth world war. Because after the third there will be no hope that any human beings will be left.

This is the fruit of all our moral and religious teaching.

I want to tell you: the fundamental reason is elsewhere. Until we make human sex orderly, spiritual—until we succeed in making sex a door to samadhi—no good humanity can be born. Daily, worse and worse humanity will be born; because today’s worse children will have sex tomorrow and produce people worse than themselves. Each generation will descend further. This is absolutely certain; it can be prophesied.

And now we have come to a point where perhaps there is no room left for further decline. Almost the whole world has become a mad house.

Psychologists in America have calculated that in a city like New York, only eighteen percent of people can be called mentally healthy. Eighteen percent! If only eighteen percent are healthy, what of the remaining eighty-two percent? Eighty-two percent are almost on the verge of derangement.

Sit sometime alone and think about yourself, and you will see how much madness is inside. Somehow you suppress it, somehow you manage to walk straight—that is another matter. A slight push and any person can go mad. It is possible that within a hundred years the whole of humanity will become a lunatic asylum—almost all will be insane. Then we will have one advantage: there will be no need to treat the insane. Another advantage: there will be no psychiatrists. Another: no one will feel that anyone is mad—because the first sign of a madman is that he never admits he is mad. Only that much advantage. But the morbidity keeps increasing. This disease, this ill-health, this mental anxiety and darkness is increasing.

Shall I tell you plainly? Without spiritualizing sex, without making union a sacred path, no new humanity can be born. In these three days I have said only this much. Certainly, a new human being is to be born. Man’s being is eager to touch the heights, to rise into the sky, to shine like the moon and stars, to blossom like flowers, to dance, to sing. The human soul is crying and thirsty. Yet man goes round and round like an ox at the oil-press and finishes there—he does not rise beyond the circle. What is the reason?

There is only one reason: the process of human birth is absurd, is grotesque. The method of our coming into being is filled with madness. We have not been able to make human sex a doorway to samadhi—therefore.

Human sex can become a door to samadhi. In these three days, on this small mantra I have said everything. And in the end let me repeat one thing and conclude today’s talk.

I want to say: those who avert their eyes from the truths of life are enemies of man. Whoever tells you that one should not even think about sex and sexual union, that person is an enemy of humanity. Because such enemies prevented us from thinking. Otherwise how could it be that till today we have not found a scientific vision and discovered the experiment that renews life? Whoever says to you that sex has nothing to do with religion is one hundred percent wrong. For sexual energy, transformed and transmuted, alone gains entry into the realm of religion. The very power of semen, rising upward, takes man into those realms of which we have no knowledge—where there is no death, no sorrow, where nothing exists except bliss.

What power, what energy is there that can take us into that sat-chit-ananda? We are wasting it. We are like vessels with holes that we lower into a well to draw water. The bucket comes up to the top, there is much noise, water spills, and it seems water must be coming—but all the water is lost on the way, and empty vessels return to our hands. We are like boats with holes. We row and row—only to drown; the boats do not reach any shore, they only sink us midstream.

All these punctures are because human sexual energy flows out through wrong channels. And the ones who misdirect it are not those who hang up nude pictures, nor those who write obscene novels, nor those who make erotic films. Those who pervert human energy are the ones who obstructed man from becoming acquainted with the truth of sex. Because of them, these nude pictures sell, these films sell, people invent nude clubs and newer and newer routes of filth and absurdity. Because of whom? Because of those whom we call sadhus and sannyasins! They have prepared the market for these. If we look closely, they are the advertisers, the agents.

A small story, and I will finish.

A priest was hurrying to his church. The village was far; he was running. Suddenly, in a ditch by the forest he saw a man lying—full of wounds, bleeding, a knife stuck in his chest. The priest thought of going to lift him up. But he saw he would be late reaching the church where he had to give a sermon, to instruct the people. That day his subject was love. He had chosen Christ’s saying: Love is God. He was on his way to explain precisely that, calculating his time as he ran.

But the man opened his eyes and cried out: Priest, I know you are going to speak on love. I too was going to come listen today. But scoundrels stabbed me and threw me here. Remember, if I survive I will spread the word in the whole village that a man was dying and this man went off to lecture on love! Look, go no further!

The priest got a little scared. If this man lives and spreads the story, people will say your sermon on love was a lie—you did not care for a dying man! So, compelled, he climbed down and went to him. Seeing his face closely, he got very frightened. The face seemed familiar. He said: It seems I have seen you somewhere! The dying man said: Of course you would have seen me. I am the Devil; I have an old connection with priests. If you have not seen me, who would have?

Then it struck him: it was the devil—his picture hung in the church. He withdrew his hands and said: Die! We would prefer the devil to die. Good if you die. Why should I try to save you? I even touched your blood—that itself is a sin. I am going.

The devil laughed loudly and said: Remember, the day I die, your profession will die too. Without me you cannot live. I am, therefore you are alive. I am the basis of your trade. Try to save me! Otherwise, the day the devil dies, on that very day priests and pundits will die; for the world will become good, and there will be no need of priests and pundits.

The priest thought and was alarmed: he is saying something very basic. He immediately lifted him onto his shoulders and said: Dear Devil, do not worry! I will take you to the hospital, get you treated; you will soon be fine. But see that you do not die. You are right: if you die, we are absolutely useless.

It would never occur to us that behind the priest’s trade stands the devil. Nor does it occur that behind the devil’s trade stands the priest. This business of the devil that is running—the exploitation of sex that runs through the whole world, everything riding on the exploitation of sex—it would never occur to us that the priest’s hand is behind it. The more the priest has condemned sex, the more attractive it has become. The more he has preached repression, the more man has fallen into indulgence. The more the priest has denied even thinking about sex, the more sex has become an unknown riddle, and we have become incapable of doing anything rightly about it.

No—knowledge is needed. Knowledge is power. And knowledge of sex can become a great power. To live in ignorance is not beneficial. To live in ignorance about sex is absolutely harmful. It may be that we do not go to the moon. There is no need to go to the moon; knowing the moon will not bring great benefit to humanity. It is not necessary that we dive five miles into the depths of the Pacific where even the light of the sun does not reach; knowing that will also not bring some utmost welfare to mankind. It is not necessary that we split the atom and analyze it. But one thing is absolutely necessary—of ultimate concern: that we rightly know and understand human sex, so that we may succeed in giving birth to a new human being.

These are the few things I have said in three days. Tomorrow I will answer your questions. And since yesterday’s day fell empty—some friends came and went back drenched—their debt is upon me, so tomorrow I will answer for two hours so that you have no hindrance or discomfort. Please write your questions—honestly! For this is not a matter where you ask the kinds of questions you usually ask about God and soul. This is a matter of life. If you ask directly and sincerely, we will be able to go deeper into these subjects.

You have listened to me with so much love; for that I am grateful. And in the end, I bow to the Divine dwelling in all. Please accept my pranam.