Existence Is God

WHY HAS MAN LOST THE CAPACITY OF SUBLIMATION SINCE PATANJALI’S TIME?

Because of too much repression. The mechanism has to be understood. Patanjali’s times were very primitive, natural, primordial; people were like children, innocent. Now, everybody is civilized, cultured. The child within you has been crushed, completely crushed. The civilization is like a monster: it goes on killing and murdering the child within you. All that is natural has been perverted; all that is natural has been condemned.

There are reasons for it. For example, every culture, every society, has to pass through many wars. If sex is not suppressed then an army cannot be created. A soldier has to suppress his sex; only then the same energy becomes the fighting energy. No country allows its soldiers to take their wives and girlfriends to the front – except America. And America will get defeated everywhere because then there is no built-up energy. A soldier needs frustrated energy. If he has the girlfriend or the wife with him he is satisfied. Why should he fight?

Have you watched? Whenever you suppress sex, more anger happens. Go and look at your monks, your so-called sadhus, and you will always find them angry.

Anger is their style of life now because they have been suppressing sex. Suppress sex: then the energy has to be released from somewhere. If you close one door another door opens immediately – and the other door will be perverted. The first was natural. Close the second door, then the third door opens – the third will be even more perverted. And by the time you open the fourth, you will be in a madhouse.

All societies use sex energy; that’s why all societies are against sex. If everybody’s sex is fulfilled, happy, beautiful, who bothers to fight? You cannot send hippies to the war. The only reason is they are so happy, living their life so naturally that not only will they not go, they demonstrate with placards – “Love, not war.” And they are right. If people are allowed to love, war will disappear from the world.

This is very complex. Even religions like Jainism, which teaches nonviolence, also teach repression of sex. This is absurd. If sex is suppressed war will be there, violence will be there, because where will the energy go? If really you want no war in the world then the energy should be allowed to move in a natural way.

But no society can allow, because war is necessary; otherwise others will jump on you. They won’t think that you are good people so no need to trouble you. If India allows total sex freedom and becomes a hippy land, China will come. It is not possible. If China allows, the fear is there, Russia will come. If Russia allows, America is waiting there. So everybody is after everybody else, and nobody can allow life to flower in natural ways. To be natural has become the most difficult thing in the world.

Then, if you want to teach a child, you have to suppress sex because near about thirteen, fourteen, a child becomes sexually mature. Then nature has given him the ticket, now he can reproduce children – but college has to be finished. If he starts getting married by the age of fourteen then how will he become a doctor, an engineer? No, he has to become a doctor, but to become a doctor he will have to wait. By the twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth year he will be an engineer or a doctor or a professor; then he is allowed to get married – because the same energy has to be used for learning. If you allow girls and boys to live in the same hostels, universities will disappear; they cannot exist. They exist on a subtle mechanism of suppression. Sex should be suppressed; only then is there energy available for something else. Then the boy and the girl put their energy into the examination.

They don’t like it, but what to do? The energy is there.

Then all the societies are against masturbation, because if you don’t allow girls and boys to live together, the boys will masturbate, the girls will masturbate.

Societies have to be against it because they are leaking energy. The energy has to be forced into the university; they have to become engineers. They are not to enjoy themselves. So all societies create guilt around masturbation. And all societies go on praising, that if you conserve sex energy you will become very, very great. Of course, in a way, one becomes: in the world of ambition. If you have not suppressed sex you cannot become a great political leader, because who bothers? It is such nonsense that who wants to go to Delhi or to the White House, Washington? Nobody bothers. What is the need? Your small house is the “White House.” You live beautifully and you enjoy it. And why should you waste your life travelling towards Delhi or Washington? No, then you cannot become a great political leader.

The sex energy has to be frustrated; then you become great artists. The sex energy has to be frustrated; then you become great scientists. Freud says that people who have very, very repressed sex energy, they become scientists; because to try to find out the secret is a sexual curiosity – a small boy trying to know how the nude girl looks, curious. All boys, all over the world, play a game called “doctor.” They become the doctors and the girl becomes the patient – small girls, small doctors, small patients – just to know how the girl looks inside the clothes. And a doctor, of course, is allowed; he has to check the body. This curiosity is the same curiosity as a scientist’s curiosity. If sex is repressed, by and by, the scientist will be trying to poke his nose everywhere – to undress nature, to know the secrets, what are the secrets. He wants the whole world, the whole existence, to be nude so he can know every secret, every nook and corner.

If sex is allowed…. For example, there are primitive societies all over the world, a few primitive societies. They have not created any great scientists. They cannot. In Bastar, in India, Osho has been to a small community of very primitive people. They have a small house, a community house, in every town. Every boy and girl after the age of twelve is allowed to go to the community house and sleep there; all girls sleep there, all boys sleep there. And no restriction on their sexuality – they enjoy. There is only one restriction, that is wonderful, that is no boy should move with any girl more than three days, so that he comes to know all the girls of the town so he can decide, and every girl has to know every boy of the town. So they can decide with whom to live their whole life. This looks really beautiful, simple, and very human. Every boy is allowed every freedom, every girl is allowed every freedom – no suppression.

Once they have known all the boys and all the girls of the community they can decide. Once they decide, then no freedom. In fact, there is no need. They are such authentic lovers as you cannot find anywhere in the world. Once a boy and a girl decide to get married they forget about other boys and girls completely.

There is no point: they have known all and this is their choice. They have found their partner – finished! They are never unfaithful to each other – never has it happened in their history that a husband has been found making love to some other woman or being interested in some other woman or a woman secretly becoming a beloved of somebody else. No, this simply doesn’t happen. It need not happen.

But they have not created great scientists or great poets or great artists or great warriors. No, they have not produced any great men of any sort. They have produced ordinary, simple, natural men. In fact all sorts of greatness are a sort of abnormality; and somewhere, the sex energy has to be used, because that is the only energy.

In Patanjali’s days people were simple, natural. No need for catharsis; nothing was repressed. There was no need to go into catharsis. But now everybody is repressed. And everybody is repressed in so many ways that years of catharsis will be needed: only then you become natural again. You have collected so much garbage in the unconscious, it has to be thrown out. Right now you cannot move on the path – first you have to unload yourself.

You must understand society has its own needs, every nation has Its own needs.

They are not necessarily the needs of the individuals. This is the problem. The individual’s need is to be happy, to be blissful – to delight in this small life that has been given to you. That is the individual need, but that is not the social need.

Society doesn’t bother whether you are happy or unhappy: the society wants you to be more productive, the society wants you to be great warriors so that you can protect the society, the society wants you to be great scientists because science is power. The society has its own needs, and the individual has totally different needs.

In a perfect society there will be no society, only individuals. In a perfect state there will be no state, no government, only individuals. At the most, a minimum of government can be allowed. For example, a postal service has to be looked after by a central agency, or the railway has to be looked after by a central agency. that’s all. A government should run railways and look after the post office, and things like that. And a government should be a negative force. When I say “negative force” I mean a government should see that no individual interferes with any other individual and any other individual’s freedom and life, that’s all.

Government should not impose any positive rules on people. This much is enough: that everybody is allowed to live his own life, to do his own thing, and nobody interferes. If somebody interferes, then the government comes in, otherwise not. But that seems to be just a utopia. The word “utopia” is very beautiful. It means “that which never happens.” Utopia means a nowhere-land which doesn’t exist, and doesn’t seem to exist; the very thing seems to be impossible.

So I am not teaching you to desire any utopia. All that can be done, and all that is practical, is to become alert so you get out of the mess. And you, please, don’t be worried about others, because nobody can bring them out of their mess if they don’t want to. If they are enjoying themselves, let them enjoy. If they are feeling happy in their misery let them be miserable, that is their freedom. Don’t try to impose anything on anybody – that is transgression, trespassing. That is violence, to me. Allow everybody his own being and his own freedom; then there will be no need for catharsis. But right now everybody is interfering in everybody else’s life; nobody wants to leave you alone.

And such subtle techniques have been used, unless you are very, very alert you will not be able to know what type of techniques have been used to make you a slave. Religions say that wherever you are, God is looking at you. That means nowhere is there any possibility to be alone and to be yourself. This God seems to be a peeping Tom. Wherever you are – even in your bathroom – he is there looking at you. Even there, you cannot hum a song, even there you cannot make faces in the mirror, even there you cannot have a little dance of your own, no.

God is looking. And “God” means very serious: an old man – white hair, white beard – and always a long face and serious, and he is looking.

I have heard about a nun who used to take her bath without removing her clothes. So somebody asked, “What are you doing? In the bath you can remove your clothes.” But she said, “God is looking everywhere, so how can I be naked? That will be insulting.” But if God is looking everywhere, he must be looking under the clothes. So what is the point? You can be naked anywhere, that means.

God is looking everywhere: you cannot escape. Forget about him.

These are subtle techniques. The society has created conscience in you, so whatsoever you do, the conscience goes on functioning in the service of the society. And society has taught you, “This is your inner voice.” This is not your inner voice. If you have been born in a Mohammedan family then you can have four wives, and your conscience will never interfere – up to four. With the fifth there will be danger. With the fifth wife your conscience will start stirring, and it will say, “This is not good.” But if you are a Hindu or a Christian then only one wife is allowed. With the second wife, trouble would arise. Your conscience will start saying, “This is bad, this is not good, this is immoral. What are you doing? You should love only one woman – and forever and forever.”

What is conscience? A Mohammedan has a different conscience? A Hindu has a different conscience?

In Osho’s childhood, in his house tomatoes were not allowed, because he was born in a Jain family, and the tomato looks like meat – just looks like! There is nothing in it. Hmm?… Tomatoes are so innocent and harmless, but in his childhood he never ate tomatoes because in his family it was not allowed. And when for the first time, visiting a friend’s house, he was offered a tomato, he vomited. The whole conscience: he couldn’t believe that people are eating tomatoes. Tomato is such a dangerous thing – looks like meat. How can you eat it?

Conscience is nothing but a trickery of society. It gives some ideas to your inner mind, and from there they start functioning. They are like Delgado’s electrodes. Very subtle… wherever you go the society follows you, hidden behind you, within you. If you do anything against, the conscience pricks.

This is not the real inner voice – because the real inner voice cannot be different for a Hindu and a Mohammedan and a Jain and a Christian, no. The real inner voice will be the same because the real inner voice is not produced by society.

The real inner voice comes from your innermost core of being, but to discover that, one has to pass through all the phases of meditation. Unless all thoughts dissolve, you cannot hear your own voice. Society has filled your mind so much that whatsoever you hear will be society trying to manipulate you from within.

From without it manipulates through the policeman and the judge. From within it manipulates through God, conscience, morality, hell, heaven and a thousand and one things.

Hence, there is a need for catharsis. You are not natural, and only through catharsis will you be able to unburden yourself from the society, will you be free from society. Free from society, you become available to nature; available to nature, you become available to existence. And, to me, existence is God.