relationship between sex and death

What is the relationship between sex and death?

  I have said that man is afraid of both. That's why they are taboos. No one talks about sex and no one talks about death.
We remain silent about these two things. We have remained silent for centuries and centuries. They are taboo subjects, they should not even be mentioned. The moment they are mentioned, something starts trembling within us.

It seems that a deep repression is there. That's why we have created substitute words. In the western world they do not say, "We are having sex." They say, "We are making love." It's a substitute word. And false, because love is a totally different dimension. Having sex is having sex; it is not making love. Love may include sex, but it has a different quality altogether.
We never talk about death directly. If someone dies, we use substitute words. We say he has gone to meet his Father, or he has gone to heaven. Death is never faced directly.

We have created many false phenomena around death and sex. If two persons are going to be married, sex is not even mentioned. And they are going to be married for sex! We have created a great illusion around marriage, but the bare, naked fact is sex. We have created a ritual, a great ritual of marriage, just to hide the fact. Why?
Why is there a taboo about these two things only? The two are deeply related. The reason for their relationship is this:
First, you are born out of sex; birth is sex. And birth and death are two poles of one thing. In your very birth, death is hidden. That's why man became aware of the deep relationship between sex and death. Death cannot happen without sex just like birth cannot happen without sex.

You may wonder.... There are organisms - amoeba and other bacteria - that are not born out of sex but out of simple division. Amoeba go on growing, feeding. A certain limit is reached where the body divides into two, because it becomes so big that now the amoeba cannot move. Up to a certain limit the body goes on growing and then it divides in two. Then the two bodies go on growing and divide into four. There is no sex, just simple division. That's why the amoeba is known as deathless. Amoeba never die. If food is supplied continuously, amoeba never die. There is no need to die, because there is no sex.

Man cannot become immortal unless we find something that changes the whole process of reproduction. If a man can be born without sex, he will never die. Death is part of sex just like birth is part of sex.
This can be understood in another way also. Those who have been most fascinated and obsessed with the concept of immortality, all those traditions that have tried somehow to make man immortal, have always been against sex. Yoga, particularly hatha yoga, has tried deeply to find methods to prolong life. That is why hatha yoga is against sex. Hatha yoga says that if you want to prolong life, don't move into sex, because sex brings death nearer.

But you are already born, so you are already involved in sex. Whether you repress your sex, or you express it, will not make much difference. You have already moved into one side. The other will follow.
Sex and death are deeply related in another sense also. In a deep sex act, you feel a certain death, as if you are no more. If you have really gone into the act totally, you are merged. Your individual entity disappears and a greater force than you takes over. The sex act starts as a voluntary act, but it never ends as a voluntary act. A point comes where your voluntary mechanism is taken over by the nonvoluntary. A point comes where your conscious mind is thrown off and the unconscious takes over. A point comes when your ego cannot exist and the non-ego is in power, in control. You feel a sudden death of the ego; you feel you are dying.

That's why people who are very egoistic cannot achieve sexual orgasm. They cannot be in a let-go; they cannot allow their unconscious to take over. They remain mentally conscious and they try to control the whole process. Then, they cannot achieve a deep sexual orgasm. The more civilized man becomes, the less possibility there is of orgasm. That blissful moment when your ego is lost and you are merged into existence is a certain death: death of the ego, death of the conscious, death of your individuality.
That's why those who are afraid of sex will be afraid of death and those who are afraid of death will be afraid of sex. The fear is there that "I may be lost. How am I to be certain that I will be capable of coming back?" It is uncertain. Who knows whether you will come back or whether you will go on and on, and disappear completely?

The same fear comes in meditation also. It is again going to be a deep orgasm, similar in many ways to a sexual orgasm. In a sense, exactly the same.

Now, modern psychology, particularly Jung's psychology, has come to discover a concept, a very old tantric concept. Tantra says that every man and woman is bisexual. No man is simply man. He is, in a way, woman also. And no woman is simply woman. Deep down, there is a man hidden. So every individual, man or woman, is bisexual. The opposite is hidden beneath.
In deep meditation, a sexual orgasm happens - not with someone outside you, but with your own polar opposite within. You meet there: your inner woman and your inner man meet. The meeting is spiritual, not bodily. They penetrate each other, yin and yang. They penetrate each other, they become one, they merge. Meditation is a deep sexual orgasm between your own two polar opposites. The same fear comes again.

If you move deeply into meditation, one day, sooner or later, you will come to know that now the last moment has come. Death is going to occur: now I will die. Fear grips you. In that fear, you may come back. If you come back, you have missed a great opportunity that only comes rarely, very rarely. Lives and lives pass before this rare moment comes when you start feeling a deep orgasm within. The inner woman and the inner man are meeting; your two polar opposites are penetrating each other, becoming one. You are at the moment when you can become whole. But fear will be there, because the ego will be lost. You as you know yourself, your image, will be lost. A new being, not related at all with the old one, discontinuous with the old one, will be there. But you will die, with all your past. Fear comes.

Death is encountered in meditation and death is encountered in sexual orgasm. But if you can encounter these deaths, you will become capable of encountering the ultimate death: the death of the ego. And without fear. Once you know that you can lose yourself and yet can be, once you know that losing is not really losing but gaining, once you know that merging is not death but life eternal - once you have known it, there is no death for you. Your body will die, everything that you have will die, but you - the very being, the very ground of your existence - is eternal.

And it is good. If you can experience death in sex, sex itself becomes spiritual; it becomes a meditation. Once you can know it with the outer woman or outer man, with the beloved or the lover, it will be easy for you to move into meditation and create the same phenomenon within that you have known without.
One can create it directly in the inner realm also. It will be difficult, but it can be created. Once it is created and you have known a deep meeting, a deep communion within your own two polar opposites, outward sex will disappear. It is just a substitute for this inner sex. I call this inner sex: meditation. You are alone, in a deep orgasm with your own polar opposite.

Wherever you can feel death, feel it. Don't escape. Death is beautiful; death is the greatest mystery, more mysterious than life. Through life you can gain the world, the futile world - meaningless, worthless. Through death you can gain the eternal. Death is the door.

Socrates was dying; poison had been given to him. His face looked ecstatic. His friends asked him, "Socrates, you are going to die within moments. Why are you looking so happy, so blissful? We have never seen anyone dying with such a blissful face, with such ecstatic eyes. What is the matter? What is happening to you?"
Socrates said, "I am entering death, the great mystery. Life is nothing before it. The unknown is opening before me, the unlimited, the uncharted. I am on a great voyage. I am losing myself, but gaining the whole universe, the whole existence."

Don't be afraid of death. The fear of death debars you from all deep experiences: of love, of meditation, of ecstasy. Once you are afraid of death, you are debarred from all deep experiences.
by
k.jagadeesh krishnan
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