Our nature, our life-force, our energy, has only one easy outlet, and that outlet is sex. Sealing that channel will create problems, so before sealing it, it is very important to throw open a new door so that the energy can be diverted in a new direction. This is possible, but it has not yet happened for the simple reason that repression is much easier than transformation. It is easier to cover a thing, to sit upon it than to tackle it, than to transform it – because of the latter demands the effort of sadhana, of a steady course of meditative action. Hence, we have chosen the internal repression of sex.
At the same time, we are unaware that nothing can be destroyed by suppression; on the contrary, it is strengthened as a reaction. We also forget that repressing something intensifies our attraction for it. That which we repress not only becomes the center of our consciousness but also sinks into the deeper layers of our subconscious. We may repress it during our waking hours, but at night it flashes across our dreams. Inside it waits, anxious to lash out at the slightest opportunity.
Repression will not free man from anything; on the contrary, its roots will go deep into his subconscious and trap him as a consequence. In the process of trying to stamp out sex, man has entangled himself; he has become trapped. Although animals have their limits and their periods, man has neither. Man is sexual each hour throughout the year. Without exception, no animal in the animal kingdom is sexual to this degree. Animals have a specific time for it, a period, a season; it comes and it goes. And afterwards, an animal doesn’t think about it again. But look at what has happened to the man. The thing which man has tried to repress has tried to suppress, shoots up throughout his life. It is an ever-active volcano.
Have you ever observed that no animal is sexual all the time, but that man leans toward sex in each and every situation? Sexuality fumes inside man, as if sex were all and everything in life. How has this perversion come about? How has this disaster occurred? Why hasn’t it happened to any animal? There is only one cause: man has done his utmost to suppress sex. And it has erupted throughout his personality in equal measure. And think of what we have done to suppress sex! We have had to develop an insulting attitude toward it; we have had to degrade it; we have had to abuse it. We have had to call it to sin; we have had to shout from the rooftops, ”Sex is a sin!” We have had to proclaim that those who indulge in sex are contemptible, are to be despised. We have had to invent countless degrading names for sex in order to justify our suppression of it. But we have never worried for a moment that these abuses and objections would eventually poison our entire beings.
Nietzsche once made a very meaningful statement. He said that although religion had tried to kill sex by poisoning it, that sex was not dead, but still alive and full of poison. It would have been better had it died, but it was not to be; it was poisoned but yet it lived on. The device misfired. The sexuality we see around us today – is the epitome of poisoned sex. Sex also exists in animals because sex is the source of life, but sexuality only exists in man. There is no sexuality in animals. Look into the eyes of an animal; you will not find lust there. But if you look into a man’s eyes you will see nothing but lust; nothing but the gross desire for sex. And so, today, animals are beautiful in a way, but there is no limit to the ugliness and stench of man, the mad repressor.
