I LOVE MY HUSBAND BUT I HATE SEX, AND THAT CREATES CONFLICT. ISN’T SEX ANIMALISTIC?

It is. But man is an animal – as much of an animal as any other animal. But when I say that man is an animal, I don’t mean that man finishes with animality; he can be more than the animal, he can be less also. That is the glory of man, the freedom and the danger, the agony and the ecstasy. 

A man can be far lower than animals, and a man can be far higher than gods. Man has infinite potentiality. A dog is a dog: he remains a dog. He is born a dog and he will die a dog. A man can become a Buddha, and a man can become an Adolf Hitler too. So man is very open-ended on both sides – he can fall back. Can you find any animal more dangerous than man, more mad than man? Just think of a scene: fifty thousand monkeys sitting in a stadium killing small children – throwing them into a fire. What will you think about them? Thousands of children are being thrown into a fire... A great fire is burning just in the middle of the stadium, and fifty thousand monkeys enjoying with joy, dancing, and children are being thrown – their own children. What will you think about these monkeys? Will you not think that the monkeys have gone mad? But this has happened in humanity. In Carthage it happened: fifty thousand men burning children. They burnt three hundred children at one time. as an offering to their god. Their own children!

But forget about Carthage, it is long past. What did Adolf Hitler do in this century’? Of course, this is a far-advanced century, so Adolf Hitler was capable of doing greater things than Carthage. He killed millions of Jews, thousands at a time would be forced into a chamber and gassed. And hundreds of people would be looking from the outside... watching through one-way mirrors. What you will think about these people? What type of men...? People being gassed, burnt, evaporated, and others are watching? Can you think about animals doing such a thing?

During three thousand years, man has been through five thousand wars – killing and killing and killing.And you call sex animalistic? Animals have never done anything more ’animalistic’ than man. And you think man is not an animal?

Man is an animal. And the idea that man is not an animal is one of the hindrances for your growth. So you take it for granted that you are not animals, and then you stop growing. The first recognition has to be this: ’I am an animal and I have to be alert and and go beyond it.’It happened:

A man wrote to a country hotel in Ireland to ask if his dog would be allowed to stay there. He received the following answer: Dear Sir, I have been in the hotel business for over thirty years. Never yet have I had to call in the police to eject a disorderly dog in the small hours of the morning. No dog has ever attempted to pass off a bad cheque on me. Never has a dog set the bed-clothes alight through smoking. I have never found a hotel towel in a dog’s suitcase. Your dog is welcome.

P.S. If he can vouch for you, you can come too!
Animals are beautiful, whatsoever they are; they are just innocent. Man is very cunning, very calculating, very ugly. Man can fall lower than the animals, because man can rise higher than man higher than gods. Man has an infinite potentiality: he can be the lowest and he can be the highest. He has the whole ladder in his being, from the first rung to the last rung. 

So the first thing I would like to say to you: don’t call sex just animalistic, because sex can be just animalistic – that is possible, but it need not be. It can rise higher, it can become love, it can become prayer. It depends on you.

Sex in itself is nothing like a fixed entity; it is just a possibility. You can make it as you like it, as you want it. That is the whole message of Tantra: that sex can become samadhi. That is the vision of Tantra: that sex can become samadhi, that through sex the ultimate ecstasy can enter in you. Sex can become the bridge between you and the ultimate.

You say: I LOVE MY HUSBAND BUT I HATE SEX, AND THAT CREATES CONFLICT. How can you love your husband and yet hate sex’? You must be playing on words. How can you love your husband and hate sex?

Just try to understand it. When you love a man, you would like to hold his hand too. When you love a man, you would like to hug him sometimes too. When you love a man, you would not only like to hear his sound, you would like to see his face too. When you only hear the sound of your beloved, the beloved is far away, the sound is not enough; when you see him too you are more satisfied.

When you touch him, certainly you are even more satisfied. When you taste him, certainly you are even more satisfied. What is sex? It is just a meeting of two deep energies.

You must be carrying some taboos in your mind, inhibitions. What is sex’? Just two persons meeting at the maximum point – not only holding hands, not only hugging each other’s bodies, but penetrating into each other’s energy realm. Why should you hate sex? Your mind must have been conditioned by the mahatma's, the so-called ’religious’ people who have poisoned the whole of humanity, who have poisoned your very source of growth. Why should you hate? If you love your man, you would like to share your total being with him: there is no need to hate. And if you hate sex, what are you saying’? You are simply saying that you want the man to take care of you financially, to take care of the house, to bring you a car and a fur coat.

You want to use the man... and you call it love’? And you don’t want to share anything with him. When you love, you share all. When you love, you don’t have any secrets. When you love, you have your heart utterly open; you are available. When you love, you are ready to go with him even to hell if he is going to hell.

But this happens. We are very expert with words: we don’t want to say that we don’t love,so we make it look as if we love and we hate sex. Sex is not all love – that’s true, love is more than sex – that’s true; but sex is the very foundation of it. Yes, one day sex disappears, but to hate it is not the way to make it disappear. To hate it is the way to repress it. And whatsoever is repressed will come up one way or other.

Remember, sex is natural. One can go beyond it, but not though repression. And if you repress it, sooner or later you will find some other way to express it; some perversion is bound to enter – you will have to find some substitute. And substitutes are of no help at all; they don't help, they can't help. And once a natural problem has been turned in such a way that you have forgotten about it,and it has bubbled up somewhere else as a substitute, you can go on fighting with the substitute, but it is not going to help.

I have heard...
A stranger got into a suburban railway carriage in which two men were already sitting. One of them had a peculiar mannerism – he scratched his elbow again and again and again. This elbowscratching was nearly driving the stranger mad by the time the victim got out at his station.’Gravely afflicted, your friend’ he said to the other man. ’Yes indeed. He has got a terrible dose of piles.’ ’I’m not talking about piles. I’m talking about all that scratching just now.’ ’Yes, that is right – piles. You see he is a very religious man and a civil servant too. And that scratching of the elbow is just a substitute.’

But substitutes never help; they only create perversions. obsessions. Be natural if you want to go beyond nature some day. Be natural: that is the first requirement. I am not saying that there is nothing more than nature, there is a higher nature – that is the whole message of Tantra. But be very earthly if you really want to rise high in the sky.

Can’t you see these trees? They are rooted in the earth, and the better they are rooted the higher they go. The higher they want to go, the deeper they will have to go into the earth. If a tree wants to touch the stars, the tree will have to go and touch the very hell – that’s the only way. Be rooted in your body if you want to become a soul. Be rooted in your sex if you really want to become a lover. Yes, the more energy is converted into love, the less and less need of sex will be there, but you will not hate it.

Hate is not a right relationship with anything. Hate simply shows that you are afraid. Hate simply shows that there is great fear in you. Hate simply shows that deep down you are still attracted. If you hate sex, then your energy will start moving somewhere else. Energy has to move. Man, if he suppresses sex, becomes more ambitious. If you really want to be ambitious you have to suppress sex. Then only can ambition have energy, otherwise you will not have any energy. A politician has to suppress sex, then only can he rush towards New Delhi. Sex energy is needed. 

Whenever you are suppressing sex, you are angry at the whole world you can become a great revolutionary. All revolutionaries are bound to be sexually repressed. When, in a better world, sex will be simple, natural, accepted without any taboo and without any inhibition, politics will disappear and there will be no revolutionaries there will be no need. When a man represses sex, he becomes too attached to money; he has to put his sexual energy somewhere.

Have you not seen people holding their hundred rupee notes as if they were touching their beloved? Can’t you see in their eyes the same lust? But this is ugly. To hold a woman with deep love is beautiful; to hold a hundred rupee note with lust is just ugly – it is a substitute. You cannot deceive animals... A man went to the zoo and took his son; he wanted to show his son the monkeys there. The son was very interested: he had never seen monkeys. They went there – but no monkeys. So he asked the zoo-keeper ’What has happened? Where are the monkeys?’ 

And the zoo-keeper said ’This is their love season, so they have gone into the hut.’ The man was very frustrated. For months he had been trying to bring the boy. They had travelled far, and now this was love season! So he asked ’If we throw nuts won’t they come out?’ And the zoo-keeper said ’Would you?’ But I think man can come out; if you throw nuts, man HAS to come out. The zoo-keeper is wrong: the monkeys will not come that is certain; if you give them money they will not come. They will say ’Keep your money. The love season is on! Keep your money.’

And if you say ’We can make you President of India’, they will say ’You keep your presidency. The love season is on! But man, if you make him a president, can kill his beloved. If that is the stake, he can do that. These are substitutes. You cannot befool animals.

I have heard...
The spinster had a parrot who kept repeating ’I want to poke! I want to poke!’ She found this slightly irritating, until a married friend explained what it meant. Then she became very alarmed...’I love that bird, but I’ll have to get rid of him, or the vicar will never call again’ she said. But her more experienced friend said ’Well, if you really love him, you’ll get him what he longs for, which is a female, then he won’t keep on about it all the time.’ Off went the spinster to the bird shop, but the man said ’No can do, no lady parrots coming in all season, Miss. But I can do you a lady owl at a reasonable price.’ Anything was better than nothing, so she popped the owl into the parrot’s cage, and waited with thrilled anticipation... ’I want to poke! I want to poke!’ said the parrot.

’Ooo-Ooo’ said the lady owl.
’Not you, you goggle-eyed freak!’ said the parrot ’I can’t stand women who wear glasses!’

Substitutes won’t do. Man is living with substitutes. Sex is natural, money is unnatural. Sex is natural; power, prestige, respectability, are unnatural. If you really want to hate something, hate money, hate power, hate prestige. Why hate love?

Sex is one of the most beautiful phenomena in the world. Of course, the lowest, that is true, but the higher moves through the lower – the lotus comes out of the mud. Don’t hate the mud, otherwise how will you help the mud to release the lotus? Help the mud, take care of the mud, so that the lotus is released. Certainly, the lotus is so far away from the mud that you cannot even conceive of any relationship. If you see a lotus, you cannot believe that it comes out of dirty mud. But it comes: it is the expression of the dirty mud.

The soul is released from the body. LOVE is released from sex. SEX is a body thing, love is a spiritual thing. Sex is like mud, love is like a lotus. But without the mud the lotus is not possible, so don’t hate the mud.

The whole TANTRA message is simple; it is very scientific and it is very natural. The message is that if you really want to go beyond the world, go into the world deeply, fully alert. aware.

OSHO, The TANTRA, Vision,