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Chapter 13: Reverence for Life

Sexuality is one of the reasons people condemn life. Who can say in how many ways we have opposed sexual energy, and called it a sin? But it can be sinful precisely because it has the potential to be sacred. Bear one thing in mind: only that which also has the potential to become sacred can be sinful.

If a small child makes a mistake, we condone it. We do not say he has committed a sin; instead we say he is only a child, that right now he is not capable of choosing right from wrong, so let us forgive his mistake. If a person commits a crime while he is drunk, then even the court pardons him - saying that he was drunk at the time, that if he had been in his right senses he would have been capable of doing the right thing, but since he was not in his right senses he cannot be blamed for the deed. And if a person is proved to be insane, he is absolved of even the biggest crime, because how can you blame a mad person? He is incapable of deciding what is right, so he cannot be held responsible for doing wrong.

A situation where sin is possible is also a situation where virtue is possible. Without there being this potential for both, sin alone cannot happen. The same energy that can become sin can also become sacred.

The reason the wise have opposed sex is very different from the reason why the ignorant have jumped on the idea. The wise ones ask you not to fall into sexual desire so that your sexual energy can be directed upwards, towards the divine. In this, there is no condemnation of sexual desire; they are simply saying there is a higher use for it. And the truth is, that in this lies its very greatness - because by indulging in sexual desire you will only enter the world and into deeper darkness. But if you don’t indulge in sexuality, then this very same energy can become a ladder to take you upwards, beyond darkness.

Why should you want to use a ladder which can take you upwards for a downwards journey?

This approach shows respect towards sexual energy, not disrespect. Sexual energy can take you towards the ultimate truth, so don’t waste it unnecessarily.

But the sick-minded have understood this to mean that one should become an enemy of sexual energy. They don’t use the ladder to take them upwards, in fact they don’t want to use the ladder at all! All that they do is roam around carrying the ladder on their shoulders - they don’t use it at all.

Taking sexual energy upwards is a very joyful experience, very blissful. But if you cannot do that, then at least don’t carry it around on your shoulders, because by doing so you are only becoming sick and you are unnecessarily carrying a burden.

This antagonism to sex also creates an irreverence for life in our minds, because life is born from it, life arises out of it, because life is an expansion of sexual energy.

The act of love is done in secret, in the dark, because somewhere there is guilt, the feeling that it is a sin. If love is a sin, then children born from love cannot be sacred. And if love is a sin, then the whole of life is a sin.

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