Q: I seem to spend a lot of my time and energy thinking about sex and sexuality. I don’t know if I’m strange but I think most people think like that. But somehow my parents and elders always seem to treat it as a taboo. I’d like to hear what you have to say about this.

Sadhguru: Let me tell you a joke. A six-year-old girl came home one day from school and asked her mother, “Mama, how was I born?” The mother was embarrassed. She said, “A stork dropped you.” The girl noted that down.

Then she asked, “Mama, how were you born?” 

“A stork dropped me too.” 

“Mama, how was Grandmama born?” 

“A stork dropped her too.” 

The girl became serious. She went and sat down and started writing something in her homework. The mother was feeling uncomfortable and after the girl had finished her homework, the mother went and picked up the notebook. The essay was about the family tree. The girl had written, “For three generations in my family, no one had a natural birth.” 

Sex is Natural, Sexuality is Invented

So, there’s nothing strange about it. It is just that your intelligence has been hijacked by your hormones. It is just compulsive behavior. When you were a child, what reproductive organs someone had did not matter to you. But the moment hormones started playing within you, you cannot think of the world beyond that. Your whole intelligence has been completely hijacked by your hormones. 

 

Sex is a natural thing – it is physical, it is there in the body. But sexuality is invented and created by you. It is psychological. This is sweeping the world today and in so many ways, it has become sick because if sex is in the body, it is fine – it will fall into its natural place where it belongs. But the moment it enters your mind, it becomes a perversion. It has no business with your mind. 

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Sex is a natural thing – it is physical, it is there in the body. But sexuality is invented and created by you. It is psychological.

Though sexuality has become a big question in the human mind, it is actually a very small question. If you go a little beyond the body, there is no man and woman. It is only on the level of the body that someone is a man and someone is a woman. To accommodate reproduction and for the species to carry on, there is a small physiological difference. To assist that difference there is a certain psychological difference. But it is the same two eyes, nose, mouth – everything is the same – just the reproductive organs are different.

Why have we made these small parts of the body so important in our minds? If any body part has to be very important, it should be your brains not the reproductive organs! 

Philosophies of Sexuality

Sexuality has become so huge because somewhere, we did not accept our biology properly. We accepted the other parts of the body but not this one part. Your sexual organs are just like your hands, legs and everything else. But you created “something” about it. As this became more and more, it became a huge thing in people’s minds. 

You cannot leave anything that you consider as a bad thing. It will follow you everywhere, please see.

It has entered your mind because somebody told you it is wrong. Now you cannot leave it alone because it is a “bad thing”. You cannot leave anything that you consider as a bad thing. It will follow you everywhere, please see. 

We have made right and wrong out of something which is so simple and basic. Then you want to find a philosophy to subvert the wrong and still have it. So many philosophies are being propounded just to support people’s sexuality. I don’t see why you need a philosophy to have sex. It’s just biology. All these complications are unnecessary. If you make it complex, it becomes an unnecessarily large part of your life.

Sexuality has a certain role in your life. If you make it too big, you will become perverted in your mind. If you try to obliterate it, you will become even more perverted in your mind.

Because of absurd ideas, either we exaggerate something or we try to unnecessarily play it down. If you look at modern societies, I would say probably ninety percent of human energy is being spent either pursuing sex or avoiding it. Sexuality has a certain role in your life. If you make it too big, you will become perverted in your mind. If you try to obliterate it, you will become even more perverted in your mind. 

Sexuality becomes more important as you get more identified with the body. As you become less identified with the body, sex recedes. Do you see, when someone becomes very intellectually active, the need for sex recedes. But most people do not know any intellectual highs and the sweetness of the mind; they do not know so much about the sweetness of emotion; sweetness of the energy is totally out of question. The only thing which gets them a little high is sex. A little sweetness of the body is sex and that is the only little break they have from the normal monotony of life that they are living. 

More Orgasmic Than Sexuality

If you are alert and observe either yourself or people around you, if they are such that there is no physical discipline, you will see, they will slowly become in such a way that they are desperately trying to be happy. There will be no joy left. The more joyful you become, the less need for pleasure in your life. When you are not joyful, there will be desperate activity, and sexuality is one of these. I am not speaking about the fundamental act which has brought all of us into existence. I am not talking against it, but you must get it off your head. 

As you become less identified with the body, sex recedes.

I see people saying this – whatever they are doing they say, “This is the next best thing to sex.” Sex is not the best thing. It is the most popular thing in the world but it is not the best thing. If you taste other dimensions of life, it is just like as a kid, you were so thrilled with certain things but as you grew up you dropped them without any effort. Sexuality should drop like that. 

As your energies get more established and subtle, just like that it is so beautiful – you do not want to have anything to do with any other body because just to simply sit here is much more orgasmic than sexuality. As it becomes a living reality where you are like this all the time, sex just disappears from your life; not because you are incapable or because you think it is wrong or immoral, but simply because it looks so childish to go cling to someone and do something and think it is so great. 

Sexuality is okay, there is nothing wrong or right about it, but it is just a rudimentary aspect of life, that’s all.

Sexuality is okay, there is nothing wrong or right about it, but it is just a rudimentary aspect of life, that’s all. If it stays in your body it is okay, but if it is in your head, it is in the wrong place. If it is in the wrong place, your life will become a mess.

Editor's Note: Whether you're struggling with a controversial query, feeling puzzled about a taboo topic, or just burning with a question that no one else is willing to answer, now is your chance to ask! Ask Sadhguru your questions at UnplugWithSadhguru.org.

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