Women who are afflicted with a passion for sex, as is common in the West today, are women who do not want to become mothers. After motherhood, a woman’s attraction for sex suddenly diminishes, and a Western woman who refuses to become a mother is doing so because she knows that as soon as she becomes a mother she will lose her interest in sex. She supports her indulgence in sex by not becoming a mother.
The governments of many Western countries are concerned about this. If this continues, what will happen to their populations? The East worries about the increase in numbers, but some countries in the West fear the decrease in numbers. Nothing could be done if women decide not to become mothers because they know they will lose interest in sex. A family planning program might be implemented by law, but no law can force a woman to become a mother. This problem of the Western countries is more intricate than our problem of population explosion. We can halt the increase by force, or legally. But the Western countries cannot increase their numbers by legislation. In the next two hundred years this problem will grow to gigantic proportions in the West, and the population in Eastern countries, increasing by leaps and bounds, could lead to these countries dominating the whole world. Simultaneously, with the passage of time, Western manpower will decrease. They will have to make women agree to become mothers again.
Some of their psychologists have begun to come out in favor of child marriages. A woman entering maturity is not going to be interested in becoming a mother – she will be more interested in sexual pleasure – so their psychologists are advising people to marry young. Then, in those cases, the women won’t get any other ideas before they become mothers. This was also one of the reasons behind child marriages in the East; they knew a girl wouldn’t want to marry and become a mother when she became an adolescent when she became conscious of sex when she had developed a taste for it. This mentality, this immense attraction for sex, exists in women until they know what they will attain by becoming mothers. But this they can realize only after attaining motherhood. There is no way to have an inkling of it before actually becoming a mother.
Why is a woman so gratified after she has become a mother? It is because she has had a divine, unbroken experience of spiritual sex with her child. And it is only because of this that there is such an intense intimacy between mother and child. A woman will lay down her life for her child, but cannot imagine taking the life of her own child. A wife can kill her husband – it happens often – and even if she does not actually do it, she can create circumstances at home that amount to the same thing. But with respect to her child, she can never even think of such a thing. It is because the relationship with her child is so very deep, so very intimate.
But in the same breath, I want to say that when a woman develops a deep relationship with her husband, the husband also becomes a child to her. Then he is not her husband anymore.
There are many men and women sitting here at this gathering. I wish to ask the men present here if they don’t behave exactly as little children do with their mothers when they are in a mood of total love towards their wives. Do you know why a man’s hand is unconsciously drawn towards the breast of a woman? It is the hand of a small child reaching for the breast of his mother. As soon as a man is overcome with love for a woman, his hand automatically reaches towards her breast. Why? What relation do the breasts have with love? Or with sex? Sex has no real relation to breasts at all, but a child has a deep association with the breasts of the mother. From infancy, he has been steeped in the awareness that his link is to the breast, the life-line. When a man overflows with deep love, he becomes a son!
And where does the woman’s hand go? Her hand reaches for the man’s head; her fingers start caressing his hair: this is the memory of her child; she is caressing the hair of her son. That is why, if love blooms fully on the spiritual level, the husband becomes the son; that is why the husband must become a son. Then one knows that one has reached the third layer of sex, the spiritual level. But we are completely ignorant of this relationship.
The relationship between husband and wife is the beginning of a journey and not the end. And remember, because it is a journey, the husband and the wife are always in a state of tension. A journey is always tiresome; peace is only to be found at the destination. A husband and wife are never calm because they are always on the move, always on the road – and most people perish on the way, never reaching the goal. Because of this, there is always a state of conflict between husband and wife; there is a round-the-clock tussle. And this is what we call ”love.”
Unfortunately, neither the husband nor the wife understands the real cause of the tension, of the strife. They each think they have made the wrong match. The husband thinks everything would have been better had he married another woman, and the wife thinks everything would probably have been fine if she had married another man. I want to tell you that this is the experience of all the couples in the world. If you were given the chance to change your spouse, the situation would not change one bit. It would be the same as changing shoulders while carrying a coffin to the cemetery: you would feel relief for a little while, but then you would notice that the weight had once again become the same. The experience in the West, where divorce is rampant, is that the new wife, in a very short time, proves to be just like the former – and in a fortnight, the new husband also proves to be the same. The reason is not to be found on the surface, but deeper down. The reason has nothing to do with the individual, with the man or the woman; the reason is that marriage is a journey, a process. Marriage is neither the target nor the goal. The goal will only be reached when the woman becomes a mother and the man becomes a son.
One friend has asked something in relation to this question. He says he does not accept me as an authority on sex. He says I can be asked about God, but not about sex. He says that he and some of his friends have come here to hear about God and therefore I should only speak about God. Perhaps they are not aware that it is useless to inquire about God from someone they do not even consider an authority on sex. Would you ask about the golden peak from someone who knows nothing about the first base-camp? If what I have to say about sex is not acceptable to you, then you should not ask me about God either. If I am not deemed fit to talk about the first step, then how am I competent to talk about the last?
The psychology behind this question is that kama and Rama, lust and the Lord, have, up to now, been considered each other’s enemies. Up to now, it has been taken for granted that those in search of religion can have nothing to do with sex, and that those who delve into sex can have nothing in common with spirituality. Both are illusions. The journey to kama is also the journey to Rama. The journey to lust is also the journey to light. The tremendous attraction for sex is also the search for the sublime.
Because man is completely wrapped up in sex, he never feels his journey is complete. Unless Rama is attained, unless sublimation is achieved, his search will never cease. And the quest of those who reproach kama and set out to reach Rama is not an authentic search for God; it is nothing but escapism in the name of Rama. They hide behind Rama to escape from kama. This is because they are mortally afraid of sex, because their lives are in a constant state of agitation about sex. They seek refuge in repeating aloud the name of Rama, ”Rama, Rama, Rama”, so that they can forget about kama, about sex.
Whenever you observe a man chanting the name of Rama, look at him closely: behind the repetition of Rama will be the echo of kama; an awareness of sex is present there. If a woman comes into sight they will start saying their rosary – ”Rama, Rama, Rama,” – twirling their beads at great speed and chanting the name of Rama at the top of their lungs. The kama inside pushes at them from within, and these escapists try to ignore it, to drown it, to suppress it by chanting the name of Rama. If such a simple trick could change one’s life, the world would have changed for the better long ago. Religion is not that easy to attain. OSHO