Sex, Love, and Sleep – Being in the Present Moment?

4 min read

“While making love to a woman or to a man, have you not felt the herenow? If you have not felt it then you have not loved.

Making love to a woman, have you not forgotten the past? Has not the past utterly disappeared in that moment? In that moment do you have a past, a history, an autobiography? If you have, then you don’t know how to love. Then you have been just playing the game of love not knowing exactly what it is – you have not loved.
“While making love, your autobiography simply disappears. There is no longer any past – as if you had never existed. You are not old – in that moment you are virgin newness; in that moment you are born for the first time; in that moment there is rebirth. Love is resurrection. And there is no future. Is there tomorrow? While making love to your woman, are you thinking of tomorrow? Of what you are going to do tomorrow? Then you are not with the woman and you are not in love either. All thinking stops – that’s the joy of love.
“That’s why I say that sex and samadhi are joined together. Sex is the lowest rung, samadhi is the highest rung, of the same ladder. They belong to the same ladder – sex is the lowest rung, samadhi the highest rung. But the ladder is the same. There is an affinity.

Man got the idea of samadhi from two things: sex and sleep. Deep sleep is also on the same ladder.

Man became alert to the phenomenon of samadhi, became excited, intrigued, by the phenomena of love and sleep – because in both these moments, time disappears, time stops, the mind stops, thinking no longer functions – and because thinking no longer functions and time stops, there is such ecstasy and such joy.

Then man became intrigued: Is it possible to attain this joy without falling into sleep? Because it happens in sleep, but you are not aware of it; it is very unconscious. Only in the morning do you hear the distant sound of it, or the later effects. If you slept deeply in the night, in the morning you feel renewed, rejuvenated – but you had not exactly been there while it was happening. What was it?

In sex, you are more aware, but then the sex moment is so small that rather than satisfying you it leaves you very frustrated. The greater the experience of love, the greater will be the frustration that comes in its wake.

“Remember: only great lovers are frustrated with love; ordinary lovers are not frustrated with love – because the higher the peak, the greater will be the fall. And the peak exists only for a single moment. It comes and it is gone; it is like lightning.
“And when the peak is gone, you have known the taste of it and now nothing will taste better and everything will look ordinary compared to it, and everything will look mundane. You have experienced something of the sacred. You have experienced something of godliness – godliness flashed like lightning, but you could not catch hold of its face, you could not figure it out, how it looks, and it was gone. It was so fast and so sudden.

Man became interested: Is it possible to prolong that experience? Is it possible to remain in that experience a little longer? Is it possible to go into it a little deeper? Is it possible to have that experience without moving into sex?

“Because sex by its very nature depends on the other. It is a kind of dependence, and all kinds of dependence destroy your freedom. That’s the eternal fight between the lovers.
“They are giving something to each other which is immensely valuable, but mixed with poison. They cannot live separately and they cannot live together. If they are separate they start missing the joy that was happening through the other; if they are together, the poison is too much – and one starts thinking: Is the joy worth it? Because you have to depend on the other. When you depend on the other, your freedom is destroyed, your freedom becomes defined, confined, limited. You cannot open yourself as you would like to open. You have always to look to the other and the other’s feelings. You feel prevented, hindered. And the other starts possessing you, the other starts becoming powerful over you – because the other knows that it is through him or her that you feel joy.
“Man started looking for the same experience without becoming dependent on the other. If it depends only on sexual experience, it cannot last forever. You can have sex once in a while – and what about the other times? All other times you will remain dull and dead. Is it possible to have that joy continuously, as a continuum, like a river always flowing?
“These were the speculations of man, but they came from sleep and love. In love sometimes it happens, and that is the moment which is called orgasm.

If time stops, if thinking stops, and you are utterly herenow, it is orgasmic.

“This orgasmic experience will give you the taste. I cannot define it, but I can indicate ways to feel it.”
END
Excerpted from Osho, Walk without Feet, Fly without Wings, and Think without Mind, Talk #3 – How to Experience Herenow
To continue reading this talk: What Is the Taste of Being Here Now? Is Thinking Part of It?

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The post Sex, Love, and Sleep – Being in the Present Moment? appeared first on OSHOTimes.