Love Has to Arise Out of Lust
Even if sometimes love-like feelings arise in my heart, immediately the next moment I start feeling ′this is not love, this is not love at all. It is all my hidden cravings for sex and all that.
So what is wrong in it? Love has
to arise out of lust. If you avoid lust, you will be avoiding the whole
possibility of love itself. Love is not lust, true; but love is not without lust
- that too is true. Love is higher than lust, yes, but if you destroy lust
completely, you destroy the very possibility of the flower arising out of the
mud. Love is the lotus, lust is the mud the lotus arises out of. Remember it;
otherwise you will never attain to love. At the most, you can pretend that you
have transcended lust. Because without love, nobody can transcend lust; you can
repress it. Repressed, it becomes more poisonous. It spreads into your whole
system, it becomes toxic, it destroys you. Lust transformed into love gives you
a glow, a radiance. You start feeling light, as if you can fly. You start
gaining wings. With lust repressed you become heavy, as if you are carrying a
weight, as if a big rock is hanging around your neck. With lust repressed, you
lose all opportunities to fly in the sky. With lust transformed into love, you
have passed the test of existence.
You have been given a raw material to work, to be creative. Lust is raw material.
I have heard...
Berkowitz and Michaelson, who were not only business partners but life-long
friends, made a pact: that whichever one died first would come back and tell the
other what it was like in heaven.
Six months later, Berkowitz died. He was a very moral man, almost saint-like, a
puritan who had never done anything wrong, who had always remained afraid of
lust and sex. And Michaelson waited for his dear departed holy friend to show
some sign that he had returned to earth. Michaelson passed the time impatiently
hoping for and eagerly awaiting a message from Berkowitz.
Then one year after the day of his death, Berkowitz spoke to Michaelson. It was
late at night; Michaelson was in bed.
"Michaelson, Michaelson," echoed the voice.
"Is that you, Berkowitz?"
"Yes."
"What is it like where you are?"
"We have breakfast and then we make love, then we eat lunch and we make love, we
have dinner and then we make love."
"Is that what heaven is like?" asked Michaelson.
"Who said anything about heaven?" said Berkowitz, "I am in Wisconsin, and I am a
bull."
Remember, this happens to people who repress sex. Nothing else can happen
because that whole energy repressed becomes a load and pulls you down. You move
towards lower stages of being. If love arises out of lust, you start rising
towards higher being.
So remember, what you want to become - a Buddha or a bull - depends on you. If
you want to become a Buddha, then don′t be afraid of sex. Move into it, know it
well, become more and more alert about it. Be careful; it is tremendously
valuable energy. Make it a meditation and transform it, by and by, into love. It
is raw material, like a raw diamond: you have to cut it, polish it; then it
becomes of tremendous value. If somebody gives you an unpolished, raw, uncut
diamond, you may not even recognize that it is a diamond. Even the Kohinoor in
its raw state is worthless. Lust is a Kohinoor: it has to be polished, it has to
be understood.
The questioner seems to be afraid and antagonistic:
It is all my hidden cravings for sex and all that.
There is a condemnation in it. Nothing is wrong; man is a sexual animal. That′s how we are. That′s the way life means us to be. That′s how we have found ourselves here. Go into it. Without going, you will never be able to transform it. I′m not speaking for mere indulgence. I′m saying move into it with deep meditative energy to understand what it is. It must be something tremendously valuable because you have come out of it, because the whole existence enjoys it, because the whole existence is sexual. Sex is the way God has chosen to be in the world, notwithstanding what Christians go on saying - that Jesus was born out of a virgin woman - all foolishness. They pretend that sex was not involved in Jesus′ birth. They are so afraid of sex that they create foolish stories like this: that Jesus is born out of a virgin Mary. Mary must have been very pure, that′s true; she must have been spiritually virgin, that is true - but there is no way to enter into life without passing through the energy that sex is. The body knows no other law. And nature is all-inclusive: it believes in no exceptions, it allows no exceptions. You are born out of sex, you are full of sex energy. But this is not the end; this may be the beginning. Sex is the beginning but not the end.
There are three types of people:
- One thinks that sex is the end also. They are the people who live a life of indulgence. They miss, because sex is the beginning but not the end.
- Then there are people who are against indulgence. They take the other, the opposite extreme: they don′t want sex even to be the beginning, so they start cutting it. Cutting it, they cut themselves. Destroying it, they destroy themselves, they wither away. Both are foolish attitudes.
- There is the third possibility: the possibility of the wise man who looks at life, who has no theories to enforce on life, who just tries to understand. He comes to see that sex is the beginning but not the end. Sex is just an opportunity to grow beyond it, but one has to pass through it.