:: BOOK OF THE MONTH ::

Sex, Money and Power

“Religions contaminate your sex energy. They start making you afraid that it is wrong, it is ugly, it is sin, it will drag you to hell. They want to dominate you; that is why they are against sex. I have no idea to dominate you. I am here to make you absolutely free.” Osho : The First Principle

Sex, money and power- these are the real basic issues. We face then daily. There is no escape from them, though we are always looking for escape routes. We seek the solutions in the scriptures. We listen to our priests, politicians and leaders who promise solutions but give us illusions, complicating the issues even more. Frankly speaking, they themselves are the root cause of the problems. Following the advice of these priests and politicians makes us unnatural and we land ourselves in all kinds of perversions. This gives them authority over us. It makes us weak and gives them energy to dominate us. We become shackled, imprisoned into all kinds of taboos. Our whole society is nothing but an endless tragic story of restrictions, repressions and perversions. To enjoy life is wrong, to make money is wrong and ultimately to breathe and live is wrong. 

And stories about these very priests are in the newspapers almost every day exposing their own perversions, their sex scandals involving the rape of minors, their abuse of the children under their care, their homosexual practices which the churches continually try to hush up but this news cannot be hidden forever.

Says Khushwant Singh, the author of many books and a senior journalist, in a recent article in his column “This Above All” in The Tribune and other newspapers:
“Flirting is non-serious. Sex is a serious matter. You may write about flirting but if you write about sex, you will be censured. Much worse, you will be condemned as a person with a dirty mind who wallows in filth. So a few, very few people dare to talk or write about sex because they know they are bound to be misconstrued and misunderstood. One man who had the courage to speak his mind on sex without caring what people said about him was Bhagwan Rajneesh known to his disciples as Osho. 

“As a matter-of-fact what he says is very serious but have been trivialized by our netas, obsessed by wonky notions of social morality…. He is right in holding that our so called civilized society refuses to accept nudity and sex as normal and natural. The more they are denied, the more they become to be indulged in secretly. We have become a Peeping Tom society. On the other hand, the so-called uncivilized, like our tribals, have natural and uninhibited sex and therefore do not create sex-related mental problems for themselves.”

Khushwant Singh writes further: “Osho condemns this as a conspiracy of priests and politicians. Instead of priests who do little more than parrot platitudes about what is and what is not allowed, it would be fairer to cast the blame on religion as it is practiced. William Reich put it succinctly: “A happy life for the majority of mankind is impossible unless the power of religion is broken. Religion is the instrument used to impose an anti-sexual morality on the masses. It prohibits the most natural of pleasures and threatens those who break its commandments with dreadful punishment. One thing is certain: our sex life is poisoned at the source.” Says Osho: “sex should never be repressed. Sex should be lived in totality with joy, without any guilt.” I say amen! He goes on to add, “…and suddenly it drops away.”

Today, this country and the world may appear a little more free than how it was 30 or 40 years ago, when Osho shocked India with his talks in From Sex to Super Consciousness. This book alone created such an upheaval around the country and the ripple-effect reached to the farthest shores around the world. That brought a label of “sex-guru” to Osho’s name. The master who intended to liberate the world from the unhealthy and unnatural taboos received such wide spread condemnation as his reward. The world may condemn Buddhas, the enlightened ones, but this does not stop them from being compassionate to the unenlightened ones. They keep on sharing their insights to the world, as they cannot do otherwise. 

In this compilation on Sex, Money and Power, I have put together Osho’s answer to the eternal questions, which are basically everybody’s questions and problems. I am certain that the deep insights in this compilation will help the reader to grow more into consciousness, to understand these basic issues and live a rich and guilt-free life, with clarity and creativity, acceptance and joy. 

Sw. Chaitanya Keerti