Sex has four stages; those stages have to be understood. Only at the fourth stage does sex become the Golden Flower. Not to understand those four stages is dangerous, and the whole tradition has been keeping you unaware of those four stages.
THE FIRST STAGE is autosexual.When the child is born he is a narcissist. He loves his body tremendously, and it is beautiful; he knows only HIS body. Just sucking his own thumb, and he is in such euphoria. You see the child sucking his own thumb – what euphoria is on his face, just playing with his own body, trying to take his toe into his mouth, making a circle of the energy. When the child takes his toe into the mouth a circle is created and the energy starts moving in a circle. The light circulates naturally in the child and he enjoys, because when the light circulates there is great joy inside.
The child plays with his own sexual organs not knowing they are sexual organs. He has not yet been conditioned; he knows his body as one whole. And certainly, the sexual organs are the most sensitive part of his body. He utterly enjoys touching them, playing with them.
And here is where the society, the poisonous society, enters into the psyche of the child “Don’t touch!” ‘Don’t’ is the first dirty, four-letter word. And out of this one four-letter word, then many more come: can’t, won’t – these are all four-letter words. Once the child is told “Don’t!” and the angry parent, mother or father, and those eyes… And the child’s hand is taken away from his genital organs, which are naturally very enjoyable. He really enjoys it, and he is not being sexual or anything. It is just the most sensitive part of his body, the most alive part of his body, that’s all.
But our conditioned minds…. He is touching a sexual organ; that is bad, we take his hand away. We create guilt in the child.
Now we have started destroying his natural sexuality. Now we have started poisoning the original source of his joy, of his being. Now we are creating hypocrisy in him; he will become a diplomat. When the parents are there he will not play with his sexual organs. Now the first lie has entered; he cannot be true. Now he knows that if he is true to himself, if he respects himself, if he respects his own joy, if he respects his own instinct, then the parents are angry. And he is helpless against them, he is dependent on them, his survival is with them. If they renounce him, he will be dead; so the question is of choosing whether you want to live. The condition is that if you want to live you have to be against yourself, and the child has to yield.
The child is the most exploited phenomenon in the world. No other class has been so exploited as the child. He cannot do anything: he cannot make unions to fight with the parents, he cannot go to the court, he cannot go to the government. He has no way to protect himself against the parental attack.
And when the parents stop him, they are stopping him because of their own conditioning; their parents had done the same to them. They are very much embarrassed by the child’s touching his own genital organs and playing with them, and so unashamedly.
Now the child knows nothing of shame, he is innocent. The ’don’t’ has entered; the energy recoils. The first trauma has happened. Now the child will never be able to accept his sexuality naturally, joyously. Repression has happened and the child is divided in two; his body is no more whole. Some part of the body is not acceptable, some part of the body is ugly, some part of the body is unworthy to be part of his body; he rejects it. Deep down in his psychology he starts castrating himself, and the energy recoils. Energy will not be flowing as naturally as it used to flow before this ’don’t’ happened.
And the natural outcome of this stupidity that has been perpetually practiced on humanity is that first the child is no more a natural being, hypocrisy has entered. He has to hide something from the parents or he has to feel guilty.
This is the autosexual state: many people remain stuck there. That’s why so much masturbation continues all over the world. It is a natural state. It would have passed on its own, it was a growing phase, but the parents disturbed the energy’s growing phase.
The child becomes stuck: he wants to play with his genital organs and he cannot. Repressing, repressing, one day it is too much and he is POSSESSED by the sexual energy. And once he has started masturbating, it may become a habit, a mechanical habit, and then he will never move to the second stage.
And the people who are responsible are the parents, the priest, the politicians – the whole social mind that has existed up to now.
Now this man may remain stuck at this stage, which is very childish. He will never attain to full grown-up sexuality. He will never come to know the blissfulness that can come only to a grown-up sexual being. And the irony is that these are the same people who condemn masturbation and make much fuss about it. And they make such statements which are very dangerous: they have been telling people that if you masturbate you will go blind, if you masturbate you will become a zombie, if you masturbate you will never be intelligent, you will remain stupid. Now all the scientific findings are agreed upon one point: that masturbation never harms anybody. But these suggestions harm. Now this is an absolute agreement; there are no two opinions about it. All the psychological researches agree that masturbation never harms anybody, it is a natural outlet of energy. But these ideas – that you will go blind – may make it dangerous to your eyes, because again and again you will think that you will go blind, that you will go blind, that you will go blind…. So many people are using glasses, and the reason may not be in the eyes; the reason may be just somewhere else. So many millions of people are stupid, and the reason may not be that they are stupid – because no child is born stupid, all children are born intelligent. The reason may be somewhere else: in these techniques. You will remain ill, you will lose self-confidence. And so many people are afraid, trembling continuously, have no trust, no self-confidence, are continuously afraid, because they know what they have been doing.
Now thousands of letters come to me: “We are caught up in this trap; how can we come out of it?”
And let me repeat: masturbation has never harmed anybody. But the moment when a person masturbates is a very sensitive and delicate moment; his whole being is open and flowing. In that moment if some suggestion is dropped in his mind – and he himself will drop the suggestion, “Now what if I go mad? if I go blind? if I remain always stupid?” – these constant autohypnotic suggestions are the cause of a thousand and one illnesses, of a thousand and one psychological problems, perversions.
Who is responsible for this?
And people who come to me come with all these perversions. And I try to help them, and MANY are helped and many grow beyond it. But the society thinks I am teaching people some perversions. This is just unbelievable. I am helping you to grow beyond your perversions; the society has given you perversions. You live in a perverted society!
If the child is allowed the natural phase of autosexuality, he moves on his own to the second phase, the homosexual – but very few people move to the second phase. The majority remain with the first phase. Even while making love to a woman or a man you may not be doing anything else but just a mutual masturbation. Because very few people attain to orgasmic states, very few people come to the glimpses that are bound to be there if your sexuality is mature. Very few people come to know about God through their lovemaking, which is a natural phenomenon. In lovemaking, meditation happens naturally.
But it doesn’t happen, and the reason is that millions, the majority, are stuck at the first stage. Even if they have got married and they have children, their lovemaking is not more than mutual masturbation. It is not real lovemaking.
Lovemaking is an art, a great art; it needs great sensitivity, needs great awareness, meditativeness, it needs maturity.
THE SECOND PHASE is homosexual. Few people move to the second phase; it is a natural phase. The child loves his body. If the child is a boy, he loves a boy’s body, HIS body. To jump to a woman’s body, to a girl’s body, would be too much of a big gap. Naturally, first he moves in love with other boys; or if the child is a girl, the first natural instinct is to love other girls because they have the same kind of body, the same kind of being. She can understand the girls better than the boys; boys are a world apart.
The homosexual phase is a natural phase. There society helps people to remain stuck again, because it creates barriers between man and woman, girls and boys. If those barriers are not there, then soon the homosexual phase fades away; the interest starts happening in the heterosex, the other sex. But for that, society does not give chances – a great China Wall exists between the boy and the girl. In the schools they have to sit apart or they have to be educated separately. In the colleges they have to live in separate hostels. Their meeting, their being together, is not accepted.
That is one of the problems that is happening to me and to my people in this so-called educated city. If this city is educated, then I wonder what city can be called uneducated. The only problem to the Poonaites is that my people are moving together, man, woman. It should be a natural phenomenon; people should be happy that men and women are moving together, creating a love-vibe around. But they have never moved together; they start feeling disturbed. They start feeling jealous, they start feeling angry, because who are these people to enjoy what has not been given to them? If it has not been their joy they will not allow anybody else to have it either. But they will not say it that way. They will talk great philosophy. They will hide their jealousies behind great words of morality, of religion, of culture – and they don’t know anything of morality or religion or culture, because all culture, all religion, all morality has to be based on love. If it is not based on love it is not there at all. It is just a game, a pseudo-game that you go on playing on the surface. Deep down you remain just the opposite of it.
Homosexuality is perpetuated by the society and condemned by the same society. These strategies have to be understood. The same society condemns the homosexual, calls him perverted, criminal. There are still countries where homosexuality is punished, you can be sent to jail for ten years. There have been countries where a homosexual could have been sentenced to death! And it is the same society that creates it!
You divide man and woman apart so much, you create watertight compartments. And when the man wants to love he cannot find the woman, and the woman wants to love and she cannot find a man. Then, whatsoever is available… she starts falling in love with a woman, he starts falling in love with a man. And it is not satisfying either, but it is better than nothing. Nature has to find its way. If you don’t allow the natural course, it will find some roundabout way. Otherwise homosexuality is a natural phase; it passes by itself.
AND THE THIRD PHASE is heterosexual.When a man is really out of autosex, homosex, then he is capable and mature to fall in love with a woman – which is a totally different world, a different chemistry, a different psychology, a different spirituality. Then he is able to play with this different world, this different organism. They are poles apart, but when they come close – and there are moments when they are really close and overlapping – first glimpses, lightning glimpses of SAMADHI are attained.
Because it does not happen, many people think that I am just talking something like poetry. It is not poetry! I am not talking fiction, I am talking reality. What I am saying is an existential phenomenon, but the need is that the man and the woman must be mature. They must have gone beyond the first two stages; only then can this happen. And very rarely, VERY rarely, are there people who are mature men and mature women. So nothing happens; they make love, but that love is only superficial. Deep down they are autosexual, or, at the most, homosexual.
To love a woman or to love a man, a new kind of being is needed which can accept the polar opposite. And only with the polar opposite – just as with negative and positive electricity meeting, electricity is born, just like that – when life electricities meet, man and woman, yin and yang, Shiva and Shakti, when that meeting happens, that merger, that oblivion, that drunkenness, they have disappeared as separate entities, separate egos. They are no longer separately there, therefore they are throbbing as one, two bodies in one soul. That is the first experience of no-mind, no-ego, no-time, and that is the first experience of SAMADHI.
Once this has been experienced, then a desire arises: how to attain this SAMADHI so that it can become a natural state of affairs and you need not depend on a woman, you need not depend on a man? – because dependence brings slavery. Only out of the experience of heterosexual orgasm does a person start searching for ways, means, and methods – Yoga, Tantra, Tao – so that he can attain the same state on his own or on her own.
And yes, it can be attained, because deep inside each man is a man and a woman – half comes from his father, half comes from his mother – and each woman is half woman, half man. So once you have known it happening through the outside woman, you will have the first glimpse that it can happen within too. The outer woman simply triggered it, the outer man simply acted as a catalytic agent; now you start meditating.
THEN THE FOURTH PHASE, the ultimate phase comes, which is BRAHMACHARYA, which is REAL celibacy; not the celibacy of the monks – that is not celibacy at all – but the celibacy of the Buddhas. It is BRAHMACHARYA. Sex has disappeared; you don’t need the outer woman, you don’t need the outer man. Now your inner man and woman have fallen in a togetherness, and this togetherness is not momentary. This is real marriage; you are welded together. Now to be orgasmic is your natural state. A Buddha lives in orgasm continuously; he breathes in and out in orgasm.
These are the four stages of sex.