Sex is the most powerful instinct in man. The politician and the priest have understood from the very beginning that sex is the most driving energy in man. It has to be curtailed, it has to be cut. If man is allowed total freedom in sex, then there will be no possibility to dominate him. To make a slave out of him will be impossible.

Have you not seen it being done? When you want a bull to be yoked to a cart, what do you do? You castrate him, you destroy his sex energy. And have you seen the difference between a bull and an ox? What a difference! An ox is a poor phenomenon, a slave. A bull is a beauty; a bull is a glorious phenomenon, a great splendor. See a bull walking, how he walks like an emperor! And see an ox pulling a cart.

The same has been done to man. The sex instinct has been curtailed, cut, crippled. Man does not exist as the bull now, he exists like the ox, and each man is pulling a thousand and one carts. Look and you will find behind you a thousand and one carts, and you are yoked to them.

Why can't you yoke a bull? The bull is too powerful. If he sees a cow passing by, he will throw both you and the cart, and he will move to the cow! He will not bother a bit about who you are, and he will not listen. It will be impossible to control the bull. Sex energy is life energy; it is uncontrollable. And the politician and the priest are not interested in you, they are interested in channeling your energy into other directions. So there is a certain mechanism behind it—it has to be understood.

Sex repression, tabooing sex, is the very foundation of human slavery. Man cannot be free unless sex is free. Man cannot be really free unless his sex energy is allowed natural growth.

These are the five tricks through which man has been turned into a slave, into an ugly phenomenon, a cripple.

The first is:

Keep man as weak as possible if you want to dominate him. If the priest wants to dominate you or the politician wants to dominate you, you have to be kept as weak as possible. And the best way to keep a man weak is not to give love total freedom. Love is nourishment. Now the psychologists have discovered that if a child is not given love, he shrivels up into himself and becomes weak. You can give him milk, you can give him medicine, you can give him everything else, but just don't give love. Don't hug him, don't kiss him, don't hold him close to the warmth of your body, and the child will start becoming weaker and weaker and weaker. There are more chances of his dying than surviving.

What happens? Why? Just hugging, kissing, giving warmth, and somehow the child feels nourished, accepted, loved, needed. The child starts feeling worthy; the child starts feeling a certain meaning in his life.

Now, from the very childhood we starve them; we don't give love as much as is needed. Then we try to force the young men and young women not to fall in love unless they get married. By the age of fourteen they become sexually mature. But their education may take more time, ten years more, until they are twenty-four, twenty-five years old—then they will be getting their M.A.s, or Ph.D.s, or M.D.s. So we try to force them not to love.

Sexual energy comes to its climax near the age of eighteen. Never again will a man be so potent, and never again will a woman be able to have a greater orgasm than she will be able to near the age of eighteen. But we force them not to make love—girls and boys are kept separate, and just between them stands the whole mechanism of police, magistrates, vice-chancellors, principals, headmasters. They are all standing there, just in between, just holding the boys back from moving to the girls, holding the girls back from moving to the boys. Why? Why is so much care taken? They are trying to kill the bull and create an ox.

By the time you are eighteen you are at the peak of your sexual energy, your love energy. By the time you get married at twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven . . . and the age has been going up and up. The more cultured a country the longer you wait, because more has to be learned, the job has to be found, this and that. By the time you get married you are almost declining in your powers. Then you love, but the love never becomes really hot; it never comes to the point where people evaporate, it remains lukewarm. And when you have not been able to love totally, you cannot love your children because you don't know how. When you have not been able to know the peaks of it, how can you teach your children? How can you help your children to have the peaks of it?

So down the ages man has been denied love so that he should remain weak.

Second:

Keep man as ignorant and deluded as possible so that he can easily be deceived. And if you want to create a sort of idiocy—which is a must for the priest and the politician and their conspiracy—then the best thing is not to allow man to move into love freely. Without love a man's intelligence falls low. Have you not watched it? When you fall in love, suddenly all your capacities are at their peak, at their crescendo, just a moment ago you were looking dull and then you meet your woman and suddenly a great joy has erupted in your being; you are aflame. While people are in love they perform at their maximum. When love disappears or when love is not there, they perform at their minimum.

The most intelligent people are the most sexual people. This has to be understood, because love energy is basically intelligence. If you cannot love you are somehow closed, cold; you cannot flow. While in love one flows. While in love one feels so confident that one can touch the stars. That's why a woman becomes a great inspiration, a man becomes a great inspiration. When a woman is loved she becomes more beautiful immediately, instantly! Just a moment ago she was just an ordinary woman, and now love has showered upon her—she is bathed in a totally new energy, a new aura arises around her. She walks more gracefully, a dance has come to her step. Her eyes have tremendous beauty now; her face glows, she is luminous. And the same happens to the man.

When people are in love they perform at the optimum. Don't allow love and they will remain at the minimum. When they remain at the minimum they are stupid, they are ignorant, they don't bother to know. And when people are ignorant and stupid and deluded, they can be easily deceived.

When people are sexually repressed, lovewise repressed, they start hankering for the other life. They think about heaven, paradise, but they don't think to create the paradise here, now. When you are in love, paradise is here now. Then you don't bother; then who goes to the priest? Then who bothers that there should be a paradise? You are already there! You are no longer interested. But when your love energy is repressed, you start thinking, "Here is nothing, now is empty. Then there must be somewhere some goal..." You go to the priest and ask about heaven and he paints beautiful pictures of heaven. Sex has been repressed so that you can become interested in the other life. And when people are interested in the other life, naturally they are not interested in this life.

This life is the only life. The other life is hidden in this life! It is not against it, it is not away from it; it is in it. Go into it—this is it! Go into it and you will find the other, too. God is hidden in the world, God is hidden here now. If you love, you will be able to feel it.

The third secret:

Keep man as frightened as possible. And the sure way is not to allow him love, because love destroys fear—"love casteth out fear." When you are in love you are not afraid. When you are in love you can fight against the whole world. When you are in love you feel infinitely capable of anything. But when you are not in love, you are afraid of small things. When you are not in love you become more interested in security, in safety. When you are in love you are more interested in adventure, in exploration. People have not been allowed to love because that is the only way to make them afraid. And when they are afraid and trembling they are always on their knees, bowing to the priest and bowing to the politician.

It is a great conspiracy against humanity. It is a great conspiracy against you! Your politician and your priest are your enemies, but they pretend that they are public servants. They say, "We are here to serve you, to help you attain a better life. We are here to create a good life for you." And they are the destroyers of life itself.

The fourth:

Keep man as miserable as possible—because a miserable man is confused, a miserable man has no self-worth, a miserable man is self-condemnatory a miserable man feels that he must have done something wrong. A miserable man has no grounding—you can push him from here and there, he can be turned into driftwood very easily. And a miserable man is always ready to be commanded, to be ordered, to be disciplined, because he knows: "On my own I am simply miserable. Maybe somebody else can discipline my life." He is a ready victim.

And the fifth:

Keep men as alienated from each other as possible, so that they cannot band together for some purpose of which the priest and the politician may not approve. Keep people separate from each other. Don't allow them too much intimacy. When people are separate, lonely, alienated from each other, they cannot band together. And there are a thousand and one tricks to keep them apart.

For example, if you are holding the hand of a man—you are a man and you are holding the hand of a man and walking down the road, singing—you will feel guilty because people will start looking at you. Are you gay, homosexual or something? Two men are not allowed to be happy together. They are not allowed to hold hands, they are not allowed to hug each other. They are condemned as homosexuals. Fear arises. If your friend comes and takes your hand in his hand, you look around: "Is somebody looking or not?" And you are just in a hurry to drop the hand.

You shake hands in such a hurry. Have you watched it? You just touch each other's hand and shake and you are finished. You don't hold hands, you don't hug each other; you are afraid. Do you remember your father hugging you, ever? Do you remember your mother hugging you after you became sexually mature? Why not? Fear has been created. A young man and his mother hugging?—maybe some sex will arise between them, some idea, some fantasy. Fear has been created: the father and the son, no; the father and the daughter, no. The brother and the sister no; the brother and the brother—no!

People are kept in separate boxes with great walls around them. Everybody is classified, and there are a thousand and one barriers. Yes, one day, after twenty-five years of all this training, you are allowed to make love to your wife. But now the training has gone too deep into you, and suddenly you don't know what to do. How to love? You have not learned the language. It is as if a person has not been allowed to speak for twenty-five years. Just listen: For twenty-five years he has not been allowed to speak a single word and then suddenly you put him on a stage and tell him, "Give us a great lecture." What will happen? He will fall down, then and there. He may faint, he may die . . . twenty-five years of silence and now suddenly he is expected to deliver a great lecture? It is not possible.

This is what is happening! Twenty-five years of antilove, of fear, and then suddenly you are legally allowed—a license is issued and now you can love this woman. "This is your wife, you are her husband, and you are allowed to love." But where are those twenty-five years of wrong training going to go? They will be there.

Yes, you will "love" . . . you will make a gesture. It is not going to be explosive, it is not going to be orgasmic; it will be very tiny. That's why you are frustrated after making love—ninety-nine percent of people are frustrated after making love, more frustrated than they have ever been before. And they feel, "What is this? There is nothing! It is 'not true!"

First, the priest and the politician have managed that you should not be able to love, and then they come and they preach that there is noth-The Fundamental Slavery ■ 115

ing significant in love. And certainly their preaching looks right, their preaching looks exactly in tune with your experience. First they create the experience of futility, of frustration—then, their teaching. And both look logical together, of a piece. This is a great trick, the greatest that has ever been played upon man.

These five things can be managed through a single thing, and that is the taboo against love. It is possible to accomplish all these objectives by somehow preventing people from loving each other. And the taboo has been managed in such a scientific way. This taboo is a great work of art—great skill and great cunningness have gone into it. It is really a masterpiece! This taboo has to be understood.

First, it is indirect, it is hidden. It is not apparent, because whenever a taboo is too obvious, it will not work. The taboo has to be very hidden, so you don't know how it works. The taboo has to be so hidden that you cannot even imagine that thing against it is possible. The taboo has to go into the unconscious, not into the conscious. How to make it so subtle and so indirect?

The trick is: First go on teaching that love is great, so people never think that the priests and the politicians are against love. Go on teaching that love is great,, that love is the right thing, and then don't allow any situation where love can happen. Don't allow the opportunity. Don't give any opportunity, and go on teaching that food is great, that eating is a great joy; "Eat as well as you can"—but don't supply anything to eat. Keep people hungry and go on talking about love. So all the priests go on talking about love. Love is praised as highly as anything, just next to God, and denied every possibility of happening. Directly they encourage it; indirectly they cut its roots. This is the masterpiece.

No priests talk about how they have done the harm. It is as if you go on saying to a tree, "Be green, bloom, enjoy," and you go on cutting the roots so that the tree cannot be green. And when the tree is not green you can jump upon the tree and say, "Listen! You don't listen. You don't follow us. We all go on saying 'Be green, bloom, enjoy dance' . . ." and meanwhile you go on cutting the roots.

Be loving.

Then there is another trick. They talk about "higher love" and they destroy the lower. They say that the lower has to be denied; bodily love is bad, spiritual love is good.

Have you ever seen any spirit without a body? Have you ever seen a house without a foundation? The lower is the foundation of the higher. The body is your abode; the spirit lives in the body, with the body. You are an embodied spirit and an ensouled body—you are together. The lower and the higher are not separate, they are one—rungs of the same ladder. The lower has not to be denied, the lower has to be transformed into the higher. The lower is good—if you are stuck with the lower the fault is with you, not with the lower. Nothing is wrong with the lower rung of a ladder. If you are stuck with it, you are stuck; it is something in you.

Move.

Sex is not wrong. You are wrong if you are stuck there. Move higher. The higher is not against the lower; the lower makes it possible for the higher to exist.

And these tricks have created many other problems. Each time you are in love somehow you feel guilty; a guilt has arisen. When there is guilt you cannot move totally into love—the guilt prevents you, it keeps vou holding on. Even while making love to your wife or your husband, there is guilt. You know this is sin, you know you are doing something wrong. "Saints don't do it"—you are a sinner. So you cannot move totally even when you are allowed, superficially, to love your wife. The priest is hidden behind you in your guilt; he is pulling you from there, pulling your strings.

When guilt arises, you start feeling that you are wrong; you lose self-worth, you lose self-respect. And another problem arises: When there is guilt you start pretending. Mothers and fathers don't allow their children to know that they make love, they pretend. They pretend that sex does not exist. Their pretension will be known by the children sooner or later. When the children come to know about the pretension, they lose all trust. They feel betrayed, they feel cheated.

And fathers and mothers say that their children don't respect them— you are the cause of it, how can they respect you? You have been deceiving them in every way, you have been dishonest, you have been mean. You were telling them not to fall in love—"Beware!" and you were making love all the time. And the day will come, sooner or later, when they will realize that even their father, even their mother was not true with them. How can they respect you?

First, guilt creates pretension. Then pretension creates alienation from people. Even the child, your own child, will not feel in tune with you. There is a barrier—your pretension. One day you will come to know that you are just pretending and so are others. When everybody is pretending, how can you relate? When everybody is false, how can you relate? How can you be friendly when everywhere there is deception and deceit? You become very, very sore about reality, you become very bitter. You see it only as a devil's workshop.

And everybody has a false face, nobody is authentic. Everybody is carrying masks, nobody shows his original face. You feel guilty, you feel that you are pretending and you know that everybody else is pretending. Everybody is feeling guilty and everybody has become just like an ugly wound. Now it is very easy to make these people slaves—to turn them into clerks, stationmasters, schoolmasters, deputy collectors, ministers, governors, presidents. Now it is very easy to distract them. You have distracted them from their roots.