When sex becomes an obsession, it takes perverted forms.
Real awareness always leads you beyond sex, and celibacy happens on its own accord. Because to be in sex you have either to be identified with the male or identified with the female. A real celibate is one who has gone beyond, who is neither.
Repression can never bring freedom. Repression makes you a slave. Repress anything, and that will become your master. So the so-called celibates in the monasteries — the BRAHMACHARIS — they are continuously obsessed with sex. Their whole obsession is sex, their mind is completely sexual — it has to be so. Or, if you are mad, and you are REALLY against the body and you start destroying the body, the only thing that you can succeed in will be that you will become a eunuch.
Love goes beyond polarity, sex remains below polarity. Sex needs the opposite, love does not need the opposite. Hence, in sex there is always a subtle conflict, because with the opposite the harmony can never be total. For moments maybe… again the conflict comes in.
In deep orgasm, if you are aware, you will know for the first time what ecstasy is. Otherwise you have only heard the word; you have not known its meaning. Only in deep orgasm, if you are aware, if your flame of awareness is burning bright, will you be able to know that sex is not just sex. Sex is the outermost layer, deep inside is love, and even deeper is prayer; and deepest is God himself. Sex can become a cosmic experience, then it is tantra. Sex plus awareness and something tremendous starts changing.
Awareness is the true path. Neither indulge nor renounce, but be aware. Do whatsoever you are doing — do it with full awareness. If you move into passion, move with awareness; and passion becomes prayer, and passion has a totally different quality to it. In the East we have called that quality tantra. The same sex is no longer sex — it is no longer sexual at all. Once you move into your passion with awareness, you have changed the very quality of it. It is no longer just physical, it is no longer just a physical release; it is a very deep experience of life. It is a tremendous experience of no-mind. It is a door towards the greatest space possible.
Sex energy is just at the source of the spine. If a child is taught from the very beginning to be against sex. Sex is sin, and sex has to be destroyed, or at least controlled — never allowed to go too far, never allowed to be spontaneous; has to be put under many controls, laws, regulations. These laws, regulations, suppressions, they become the buffer: the kundabuffer is created. Then sex energy remains repressed at the source of the spine and does not rise in the spine. That’s what they say in the East: Once the sex energy rises in the spine, you start becoming very very happy. When the sex energy reaches to the seventh — SAHASRAR — you flower into a lotus bloom. Your life then is a deep ecstasy.
You are obsessed with sex because you don’t know any other sort of celebration. So the problem is not sex really; the problem is that you don’t know any other celebration. Nature allows you only one joy, and that is of sex. Nature allows you only one enjoyment, that is of sex. Nature allows you only one thrill, and that is of sex.
In the sexual act you have a certain thrill, a moment of forgetfulness, a moment of oblivion. You feel good — for a few seconds, only for a few seconds, you drop out of this routine world. Sex gives you a door to escape into some other world — which is non-tense; there is no worry; you are simply relaxed and melting. But have you observed? After each sexual act you feel frustrated.
Sex creates neurosis, it is neurotic, because it can never satisfy you. Now, go to the madhouses of the world and just watch the mad people, and you will always find that somewhere or other there is a sexual problem. That’s what Freud says, that ALL pathology is somehow connected with sex. Too much sex obsession becomes neurotic. If you live in the body, you are bound to become neurotic. You have to go a little deeper and higher than the body.
Whenever a person starts condemning sex, somewhere he must be carrying a jealousy. Buddha is not condemning. He is simply factual. He simply says whatsoever is the case. And he wants you to come out of it because your destiny is bigger, higher is the potentiality.
Animals have sex but no sexuality. Man has sex plus sexuality. Sex is physical, sexuality is mental — and when you talk, your talk can be sexual. Animals have sex; that’s a physiological act. They don’t talk, they don’t have any language; but man has language, and language is one of the most powerful instruments in the hands of man. You communicate through it, you relate through it. You seduce through words, you insult through words; you show your love through words, you show your hate through words. You repel or attract through your words.
In sex there may be relaxation. In sex there may be physiological health and hygiene. But there is no growth. You remain animal. With love you become human. With love you become upright. With love you stand erect on earth. With sex you are again animal, you are horizontal on the earth, just moving like other animals, crawling. With love you are erect, vertical.