“What is that thing called Love?” Sexuality and love are opposed principles”. (E. Lucks, Eros). A good question above indeed. In the material world,
on the basiest level, love is nothing but lust. It is really love. Love is much more, much more. Love’s actions are not based on the temporary gratification of the senses. Love becomes Lust the moment you make it a means for the satisfaction of some animalistic needs”, Said Mahatma Ghandhi. That is lust, and that is what usually goes under the name “LOVE” in this material world. But real love is far different. The Greeks wisely distinguished between the two in their language: eros, physical love, or lust; and agape, spiritual love. In this world, “I love you” usually means “I lust for you”. Infact there is raw lust and romanticized lust. When certain sentiments surround the set drive or urge; people call it “romantic”. By definition, romance has little to do with reality. So-called romance sweeps people off their feet with a storm of emotions. People want romantic attachment or togetherness. In a romantic affair, there is the glitter of some excitement and adventure. At last, people think I have finally met the person I’ve been looking for, the love of my life. The sex drive is strong that under the grip of lust, one feels that he wants to posse the sense object (boy or girl) forever and ever. When a man lust over a woman, he experiences a whole range of romantic emotions. He feels tender, intimate, protective, solicitous, and gallant. You make me feel like a Man, bab” he says. Won’t you be mine”? “I can’t live without you”. “you and I forever” “You are the only one I’ve being waiting for”. “It’s now or never”. These are the few love expressions in love affairs and how real? The woman wanting to be possessed to belong to a man, says, “I am yours, and I will never love anyone but you”. Sex can break up families and jeopardize one’s health, wealth and reputation. Men have not hesitated to sacrifice everything for sexual passion. Even wars have been fought nor started over sex. How powerful and lustful?” Still, the mind’s rationalizations are so convincing and the sex drive so strong in man and woman that people will convince themselves of anything, say anything and risk everything
— just to have a moment of sex — the mighty slogan. Yogis of then tell the story of ‘Liquid beauty”. Once upon a time, a young prince became carried away and
attracted by a beautiful girl named Kesini, who wanted to live a calibate life devoted to God in other words, a reverend sister. The prince became captivated at first sight because Kesini was so beautiful having not met with any man since
– – she was born. The Prince then approach Kesini for marriage, saying that he will die if Kesini refused to marry him. But Kesini resisted saying, I will marry you but come back in two weeks, and my beauty will be for you — dear Prince. The Prince went away, and for two weeks felt very anxious and troubled. After two weeks, he returned but could not recognize her proposed wife Kesini. She was shriveled and emaciated like an old hag. She had taken a strong purgative that had thoroughly flushed her body. Seeing the Prince, she asked, do you still want my beauty> This Prince was horrified and speechless. And she added, go to that pot at that corner. And she pointed to a pot full of stool and vomit. There lies the beauty that you desired. Take it and be happy. The Prince stood dumbfounded and looking at the pot of Kensini’s stool and Kesini’s stiny and tiny appearance without her natural usual beauty. That is an extreme case, but it is a fact that nothing destroys romantic sensibilities as fast as the stench of mortality. Romance is an illusion, a dream. Romance doesn’t want to be reminded of things as they are, Bad breath, perspiration, stinky feet, flatulence, excreta, urine, menses, etcetera are all unromantic reminders of decay and death. They tell people that, after all, their lover is mortal and beauty is temporary, therefore people are constantly being sold perfumes, powders, toothpaste, deodorants, mouthwash, after-shave and various other toiletries. In the hide and seek game of sex, we mustn’t let it be known that actually we are reeking flesh and blood. It is truly said that beauty is only skin deep, if we peel away a millimeter of epidermis, how ghastly the sight. How often a “Sexy” face or body has captured our attention only to disappoint us on closer inspection. “Beauty is the eye of the beholder” True. But what is this façade that fascinates. What is this stammering veneer, this illusory play of light and shadow,
bone, flesh, blood and muscles. Even if the body does possess some inherent
beauty, how long can it last? Five years, ten years — Okay. All major religions warn against fleshy pleasures. To remain steadfast in celibacy; Lord Budha warned
that this body is a glorified bag of excrement awaiting burial, which indeed it is.
Mohammad told his followers: “Thy worse enemy is the nafs”, which is between
thy legs? The Talmud says, “There is a small organ in the human body which is always angry if one tries to satisfy it, and, always satisfied if one starves if”. And the Mahabarats states that, “Just as fire blazes when fuel is pored on it, so the sexual appetite is never satiated by indulgence. What, then is the powerful force of lust? And what is this need to love and be loved? It is a fact because we are lonely. We want love, and we want to be loved. We feel a need for intimate relationship. We innately yearn to give everything to another, to surrender to another, to be theirs and theirs alone. Often we hope for a person “out there” who can answer our every need. We long for someone who will attract our love forever and ever, someone to whom we can give all our affections, sentiments, hopes and emotions. We all want someone capable of responding in kind, someone who will not disappoint us, who is constant, and whose love will not die, or end. Such a person
cannot exist in this world, where every one and everything is subject to birth, old age, disease and death. That Perfect person we are looking for is God, the reality
behind material reflections. alone is eternally real God alone is all attractive.
all Beautiful and every thing. This world is but a perverted reflection of God. Sex
is. but the distorted material expression of the eternal love existing between God
and the soul, or in Christian terms, the relationship between the Bridegroom and
his bride. A God fearing person is a person who sees God as the one incorruptible
reality behind the mask of various material materials. Plato for instance, refrained
from all sensual pleasure through love of contemplation of truth. Plato based his moral system upon the distinction between body and sensual and the spiritual part
of our nature, and St. Thomas Aquinas noted. “This is called the neti-neti process”. God is not this, God is not that. And when everything not-God is discarded, God alone ultimately remains. But in that final elimination everything is found in God because God is part and parcel of everything.
In the Hindu tradition, one of the many sanscrit names for God is Madana Mohana. Madana is also a name for cupid — lust personified. Madana or Krishna, means ‘One who attracts” The idea is that the beauty of Krishna, the all-attractive attract even Cupid. When we are attracted to God, the arrows of Cupid cannot affects us. Cupid — lust personified is impotent in the presence of God. Indeed the sex drive can be transcended only by the grace of God, the all- attractive supreme Personality of Godhead, in this way the desire for sex can be transformed to the desire for God consciousness. Once we understand the nature of misdirected desire, we will understand the mistake in desiring any thing other than God. This does not mean that our love for other people are diminished. Rather, true love for others is realized perfectly only when we can see all beings abiding in God, and God within all beings.
Actually, we can love others only if we first see God as the real loveable object with them or anything that we love. It is not the material body that is lovely or lovable, but the soul within it, because that spirit soul is a fragment of the complete spirit whole, who is the supreme Personality of Godhead. Sometimes a child picks up a razor. The father knows that if he takes it away, the child will soon cry. So the father attracts the child with a toy and when the child mind is captivated with the toy, the takes the razor from the child and puts it away. Similarly, this is how we have to approach ourselves regarding sex.
Psychiatrists may call this a form of sublimation, strong sexual desire is expressed
in an acceptable or positive way. But this is somewhat different from the Frudian conception of sublimation or repression. Freud saw the sex urge as primal. For
him, sex was God. But factually it is the other way round. Our love for God is primal and natural: the sex drive is but its perverted reflection. Love of God is the spiritual reality behind sex. Freud himself admitted. “The knowledge of the essential factors of sexuality is still withheld from us. “Sex is God love expressed pervertedly in the material world, it is a diseased state of affairs. Conditioned by passion and ignorance in which people have gone mad. They have let material things bewilder them and force them into a degrading bondage — But why?
Everybody wants to enjoy. That is our natural propensity. But due to ignorance, we have forgotten how to enjoy. We are just chewing the chewed. Certainly there is some sweetness in sugar cane but after we chew it and spit it out, what can we hope to gain by chewing it again? Although we have experienced no real lasting satisfaction from sex, we try again and again. We do not say that there is no pleasure there. Certainly there is some enjoyment in sex. But it is temporary and sapping. Now in human life, we seek something higher. Vedic literatures state that human life is meant for higher pleasure — God —realization. God is the only factual enjoyer of his creation. Everyone else is being enjoyed by Him. Physically, a woman’ enjoyment is in being enjoyed by a man. Then in their pleasure, they both enjoy equally. Similarly, God is the eternal Bridegroom and the only enjoyer. The creation including ourselves is His bride, the enjoyed. When the created beings try to enjoy like the creator, the situation becomes topsy-tury “All right”, God says in effect. “You want to enjoy like me. Then here you go enjoy yourself in the material world of make — believe, a world of illusion”. So we take Birth in this material world where every one is falsely trying to be God in various ways and means and lording over material resources and dominating others. To be happy we have to try to stop enjoying material nature — its possible. We must be prepared to accept our normal, natural, constitutional position of participating in God’s enjoyment. Only when our souls are ravished or enjoyed by God, will we be really happy. Alas, if only the transformation from lust to love were quick. Habits die Hard. Even on his dead bed an old man will make passes at his nurse. The remembrance of a petty face has even diverted many great saintly men form the successful practice of celibacy. Hindu scriptures abound in stories of heavenly maidens breaking the meditations of holy men by the mere tinkle of their ankle bells. On the other hand, a yogi to avoid contact with sex attraction, went beneath the river to do his meditation. But one day as he opened his eye under the river, his eyes caught sight of two fishes dilly-darling before his eyes. He could not resist the unbearable urge but came out of the river, forget about his meditation and went in for marriage. Also Samson, the great warrior of his time, fell prey to the level of a mere weakling, due to his contact with Dalilâ. He will never forget the woeful experience where he completely lost his mighty strength, great sight and finally his whole existence. That is the horrific power of uncontrolled sex urge. Since attracted we must be, then let us be directly attracted to the all-Attractive supreme person Himself. This is our only way of escaping the deadly arrows of cupid — the lust personified. If we fully surrender to the Lord, He will help us. But first, we must cultivate that higher taste which makes surrender to the Lord possible. This means turning from illusionary objects and focusing on the supreme Lord. Infact all religion, philosophy, and yoga aim at this one fact. And the best way of conscentrating on the supreme Lord is to redirect our senses to Him. All the energies we’ve used to gratify our sex desire must now be used in complete devotion to God. Heaven helps these who helps themselves. Factually, mortals take to pleasure like ducks to water. This is natural. By cultivating the transcendental
knowledge of revealed scriptures, we can come to know that real pleasure is found in God, not in the temporal and glittering that are not gold, found scattered around the world. Still great philosophers have been vanquished by a pretty face. Philosophy is not enough. Reason is not enough. There is nothing neither rational nor philosophical about lust. After all, “love is blind,” blind to reason and philosophy. In order to give up an inferior pleasure, we have to start enjoying a superior one. A man’s appetite is not satisfied by thinking or philosophizing about food: he has to eat sufficiently. Only then will he be contended. All religions, traditions offer a great banquet of transcendental savories, which we can eat to our full satisfaction. Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to take advantage of what is before them. It is not occult, nor even difficult. Rather this grand avenue of delight is as easy as calling out the name of our beloved, the supreme personality of Godhead, the reservoir of the highest pleasure. When under the control of the sex drive, people tend to believe that genital contract is the only way to fulfill the need for pleasure. Still they are never fulfilled. Fire is never extinguished by pouring fuel on it. Material pleasure never satisfies. It must constantly be renewed.
After today sexual partner is lost, people start looking for tomorrow’s. They lament for what they have lost or consumed and they hanker for what they don’t have. The sex urge is like all itching sensation, and sexual intercourse is like scratching it. Even if a person has a limitless supply of sense objects, he can never remove the sexual itch. It is insatiable. The more the itch is scratched, the worse it becomes. For animals, sex is a biological call and nothing more. But for man, a great deal more is involved than genital manipulation. Man possesses a mind capable of creating sexual fantasies. Man is often motivated by aesthetics, romance, intimacy, fear of loneliness, the desire to give pleasure, and the desire to enjoy pleasure in the company of another. This is not merely a biological response or hormonal reaction like an animal’s rutting. Though sex has its biological basis., it is secondary to the desire to enjoy pleasure by giving and receiving in an intimate relationship. In this world, such relationships, even at best, are temporary. Finally, no matter how intimate, loving and caring, nor darling to one another, death tears us apart, showing us that we do not love, the right person — God. The love for God is real and eternal — There is no-more separation by death nor other wise. This is my message for you dear brethren. Adieu
