To reach the final step, it is necessary to take the first – because the first step is going to pave the way for the second and, ultimately, for the last step of the journey. If your first step is taken in the wrong direction, you can never reach your intended destination; you may end up in the wilderness instead. And so, if you wish to reach the ultimate, it is more important for you to understand kama than to understand Rama. You cannot reach God without first understanding sex.

I am also informed by letter that Freud’s opinions on sex may be worthy and acceptable but asked how mine can be considered true and sincere.

How can you decide whether I am honest and sincere or not?  In this connection, whatsoever I say,   it won’t be decisive because I myself am the subject under consideration. If I say I am honest it is meaningless. It is also meaningless if I say I am not honest because the very subject under debate is whether the person making these statements is an honest man or not. So whatever I say in this context will be meaningless; it will be futile. I say, experiment with sex and find out for yourselves whether I am honest or not. You will come to know the truth of my statements when you attain the experience for yourselves. There is no other way.

For example, if I were to talk to you about a certain swimming technique, you might doubt whether my method was feasible or not. My reply to that would be to ask you to come along to a place where you could wade into the river.  If my advice were useful in helping you to swim across the river, then you would know that what I had said was neither worthless nor insincere.

As far as Freud is concerned, I wish to explain to this particular friend that it is quite probable Freud was not aware of what I am telling you here.  Freud was one of the few  seers who guided mankind  in the direction of sexual liberation, but he had no idea whatsoever that spiritual sex existed. The knowledge Freud systematized was that of sick sex; his research was with the pathological. Freud was a kind of doctor and his discoveries were used like treatments, doled out to sick people. Freud hadn’t studied normal, healthy sex. He was a research scholar dealing in sickness, in perversion,  and his mind was primarily set on treatment, on cure.

Therefore, if you are bent on confirming the truthfulness of what I say, you will have to turn to the philosophy of Tantra. Tantra made early attempts to spiritualize sex, and, although we banned thinking about Tantra thousands of years ago, the monuments of Khajuraho and the temples of Puri and Konarak are living testimonials. Have you ever been to Khajuraho? Have you seen the images there? If so, then you must have experienced two wonderful phenomena. First,  even after seeing the images of the naked couples in intercourse, you will not feel any sense of vulgarity; you won’t see anything ugly or bad in the images of naked, copulating men and women. And the second thing is that you will experience a sense of peace. A feeling of sacredness will envelop you. Your reaction will surprise you. The visionaries who created these statues were people who had seen and known spiritual sex intimately.

If you see a man in the grip of sex, if you look at his face and into his eyes, he will appear ugly, frightening, bestial; you will see a disturbing and ferocious lust there. When a woman sees a man approaching her,  and he is full of lust,  even if he is dear to her she will see an enemy in him and not a friend. He will not even look human to her; he will be like a messenger from hell. But on the faces of those statues, you will find the glorious shadow of Buddha, the sublime reflection of Mahavir. The composure and serenity on the faces of the statues are that of samadhi. A serene sacredness emanates from them. Nothing less than a wave of eternal peace will encompass you if you meditate on those statues. You will be awed.

If you fear that sexuality will overwhelm you after seeing the naked statues, I beseech you, go straight to Khajuraho without further delay. Khajuraho is a unique monument on this earth, yet moralists like the late Shree Purshottamdas Tandon and his colleagues were of the opinion that the walls of Khajuraho should be covered with a coat of terracotta because they believed the images made people sexual. I was astonished when I heard this!  The builders of Khajuraho had an aim,  and it was that if people would sit in front of the statues and meditate on them, they would be freed from lust. For thousands of years, these images have been objects of meditation. It sets a wonderful example for us, that over-sexed people were asked to go to the temples of Khajuraho, to meditate on statues, to lose themselves in them.

Although we have often observed this same truth in ordinary human experience, we have not really been able to see it. For instance, if you are passing by and see two people quarrelling on the road, you feel like stopping and watching the fight.  Why?   Have you ever thought about what you get out of seeing others fight? Leaving a pile of work aside, you will stop for half an hour to watch people fighting.  You also go to boxing matches.  Why?  You probably are not aware that they have a therapeutic effect. By watching two men fight, the deep-seated instinct to fight that exists inside you is satisfied. It dissipates; it is thrown out, and you become much calmer. If one sits and meditates with a peaceful mind upon images of intercourse, that inner maniac, man’s mad sexuality, can evaporate.

A man went to a psychiatrist with a problem: he was very annoyed with his boss. If his boss said anything to him he immediately became angry and felt like taking off his shoe and hitting his boss with it. But, how can you hit your boss? Is there a man who does not feel like hitting his boss at some point? Such an employee is rare.

In any case, the man went on suppressing the desire to hit his boss, but he began to develop a complex about it, and, afraid he might actually hit his boss someday, he started leaving his shoes at home. But he could not forget about the shoes. Whenever he saw his boss, his hands automatically went towards his feet. But fortunately, the shoes had been left at home, and he felt a bit easier because he knew that one day, in a frenzy, he just might take off a shoe and throw it at his boss.

But he didn’t free himself of the shoes just by leaving them at home;  they continued to loom large on his conscience. If he were fiddling with a pen, he drew shoes on the paper; in idle moments, he sketched the shape of a shoe. The shoes filled his thoughts, and he was mortally afraid he would attack his boss some time.

At home, he told his family it was better if he did not go to the office at all. Now, his mental condition was such that he did not need his own shoes: he might grab anyone’s shoes to hit his boss; his hands had even started moving towards the feet of his colleagues.  At this point,  his family decided it was high time he was taken to a psychiatrist. And so he went.

The psychiatrist said his sickness was nothing much to worry about, that it was curable. He advised him to hang a picture of his boss at home and to hit it with a shoe five times every morning. The photo was to be hit religiously before he went to the office, and furthermore, he was not to miss a single day. The ritual was to be observed daily, just like morning prayers, and then, after returning from the office each day, the process was to be repeated.

The man’s first reaction was, ”What nonsense!” Although he was astonished at the idea, he felt quite happy about it. The photo was hung and, accordingly, he began the prescribed ritual.

On the very first day, when he went to the office after hitting the photo five times, he noticed a  strange sensation: he did not feel as angry at his boss as he had. And, within a fortnight, he had become very polite to his employer. His boss also noticed the change in him, but of course, he was unaware of what had been going on.  He also told his employee that he had become very polite,  very obedient and very nice indeed of late and wanted to know what had happened. The employee replied, ”Please don’t ask me about it or everything will be topsy-turvy again. I just can’t tell you.”

What is the truth behind this story? Can anything really be achieved just by hitting a photo?  Yes  –  by hitting the photo, the man’s obsession to hit his boss with a shoe simply dissolved, faded away.

Temples like those of Khajuraho, Konarak and Puri should be in every nook and corner of this country. There is nothing important to be found in other temples; there is nothing scientific, no planning, no meaning in them. They are not needed at all. But the existence of the Khajuraho temples and others like them is full of meaning. Anyone whose mind is overly anxious about sex should go there and meditate. When he returns, he will be light of heart; he will be at peace.

The Tantrikas tried to transform sex into spirituality, but the preachers of morality in our country did not allow the message to reach the masses. – OSHO