Go And Indulge

TO BE SENSITIVE IS TO BE RELIGIOUS. BUT IT SEEMS THAT SENSITIVITY LEADS US TO SENSUALITY AND INDULGENCE. WE ARE AFRAID OF INDULGENCE. THEN WHAT IS THE WAY FOR US?

Then indulge! Then be sensual! Why are you so afraid of life? Why do you want to commit suicide? What is wrong with indulgence and what is wrong with being sensual? You have been taught so, and this is what I am saying. Then you become afraid of being sensitive because if you are sensitive, then everything will grow with sensitivity. Sensuality will grow – it is beautiful, nothing is wrong with being sensual. An alive man will be sensual. What is the difference between a dead man and an alive man? The dead man is no longer sensual; you touch and he doesn’t feel, you kiss and he doesn’t respond.

I have heard one anecdote about Picasso. A lady was appreciating Picasso’s pictures and she said, ‘Yesterday I went to a friend’s house and there I saw your self portrait. And I loved it so much, and I was so impressed that I kissed the portrait.’ Picasso looked at the lady and said, ‘And did the portrait reply? Did the picture kiss you in response?’ The lady said, ‘How foolish, how can the picture respond?’ Then Picasso said, ‘Then that was not me. A dead thing; how could it be me?’ If you are alive, your senses will function to their total capacity; you will be sensual. You need food and you will taste; you will have a bath and you will feel the coolness of the water; you will move in the garden and you will smell the fragrance – you will be sensual. A woman will pass and a breeze will pass within you. It has to be so – you are alive! A beautiful woman passes and nothing happens in you? You are dead, you have killed yourself.

Sensuality is part of being sensitive. Because of the fear of sensuality all the religions are afraid of sensitivity, and sensitivity is awareness. So they go on talking of being aware, but they cannot allow you to be sensitive, so you cannot be aware. It becomes just talk. And they cannot allow you indulgence. In fact, they have coined the word ‘indulgence’. It has a condemnatory note in it. The moment you say ‘indulgence’, you have already condemned.

This is the dilemma: religious people condemn indulgence, and they create indulgence. They condemn sensuality and they create sensuality. How does it happen? When you go on suppressing your senses, the very suppression creates indulgence. Otherwise, a really alive man is never indulgent. He enjoys it, but he is never indulgent. A man who has been eating well every day cannot indulge in food. But go on a fast, then indulgence comes. A man who has been fasting goes on thinking about food, food, food. Food becomes an obsession. He eats for twenty four hours. Then, when he comes to break the fast, he indulges to the very other extreme. On one extreme he fasted, on the other extreme he wilt to eat too much.

A sannyasin came from England and he told Osho that he loves fasting. He eats very little and that too on alternate days. Osho said to him, ‘Fasting can become a dangerous thing. Sometimes it can be used, but as a medicine, not as a way of life. Fasting can never become a way of life.’ Osho talked to him and he talked him out of his fasting obsession. For three days he was not seen at all. Osho waited, ‘Where has he gone, what has happened?’ After three days he came and he said, ‘I was ill. You talked about fasting and you said that it is not good; so I indulged in food. I ate too much.’

This always happens: from fasting you move to too much of an extreme. Just in the middle somewhere, is the right thing. Buddha again and again used the word ‘right’ with everything: right-food, right-memory, right-knowledge, right effort.

Whatsoever he said, he always joined the word ‘right’ to it. The disciples would ask, “Why are you always joining this word ‘right’?” He would say, “Because you people are dangerous. Either you are on this extreme or the other.” If you fast, then indulgence will arise. If you try to be celibate, then in sex indulgence will arise. Whatsoever you force on yourself will finally force you towards indulgence.

A really sensitive man enjoys life so much that the very enjoyment cools and calms him down. He has no obsessions. He is sensual.

And if you ask an Enlightened person, a Buddha is more sensual than anybody else. He has to be because he is so alive. When Buddha looks at the trees, he must be seeing more colors than you can see; his eyes are more sensitive, sensual. When a Buddha eats, he must be enjoying more than you can enjoy because everything within him is functioning perfectly. You can hear, if you pass near a Buddha, the humming of a perfectly functioning mechanism, like the humming of a perfectly functioning car. Everything is going absolutely as it should go. He is sensitive, he is sensual, but there is no indulgence. How can indulgence be? – Indulgence is a disease, indulgence is an imbalance. But to you I don’t say this; I say, ‘Indulge and be finished with it. Don’t carry it in your head. That’s worse than doing it.’

Indulge! If you want to indulge in food, indulge. Maybe through indulgence you will come to your right senses. Maybe through indulgence you will come to a ripeness, a maturity that says that it is foolish.

I remember Gurdjieff reporting that he had a liking for a certain berry type fruit.

It is found in the Caucasus, and it had always been bad for him. Whenever he would take it, his stomach would be disturbed: pains and aches and nausea and everything. But he liked the fruit so much that it was impossible not to eat it.

After a few days he would eat it, again and again. He reports, ‘My father went to the market one day, took me with him and bought a large quantity of the fruit. I was very happy and surprised – why is he buying them? He has always been against it. He had always told me never to eat it. What has happened? What a good father!’ When Gurdjieff was only nine years old, his father took a stick in his hand and he said, ‘You eat the whole lot. Otherwise, I will beat you to death.’

And he was a dangerous man. Tears were flowing and Gurdjieff was eating, and he had to eat the whole lot. He vomited, but his father was a very, very hard man. He vomited, and for three weeks he was ill with dysentery, vomiting and fever. Then the fruit finished. He said, ‘Even now that I am sixty years of age, if I come across the fruit my whole body shakes. I cannot even look at the fruit!’ The indulgence created such a deep understanding, to the very roots of the body.

I say to you, ‘Go and indulge.’ Nothing is wrong with indulgence. If you really indulge and don’t withhold yourself, you will come out of it more mature.

Otherwise, the indulgence, the idea, will always persist – it will haunt you, it will become a ghost. People who take the vow of celibacy are always haunted by the ghost of sex. People who try to be in any type of control are always haunted by the idea of indulgence, of breaking all bounds, disciplines and controls and running headlong into it.

Just allow life to take you wheresoever it leads you and don’t be afraid. Fear is the only thing one should be afraid of, nothing else. Move! Be courageous and daring, and I tell you that, by and by, the very experience of indulgence, sensuality, will calm you down. You will become centered.

But I am for; sensitivity. Even if it brings indulgence, even if it brings sensuality, it’s okay. I am not afraid of indulgence and sensuality. I am afraid of only one thing: that the fear of indulgence and sensuality may kill your sensitivity. If it is killed, you have committed suicide. Sensitive, you are alive, aware; the more sensitive, the more alive and aware. And when your sensitivity becomes total, you have entered the Divine.