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Chapter 4 - Transcendence brings buddhahood
A man who is hungry cannot think of poetry. A man who is hungry cannot conceive of meditation. It is impossible! But a long, long traditional ego tries to hide its poverty. The so-called Indian spiritualism, the so-called desire of Indian culture to guide the whole world towards spirituality is just stupid. It is sheer nonsense, it is rubbish. But that is their only face-saving device -- they can save face only behind that screen. They know their bodies are hungry, they know that things which are absolutely necessary to them are not available. They are starving, they are ill, sick in every way. Ninety-eight percent of the country is living in the state of a beggar. Nobody is well nourished: almost everybody is undernourished. And when a person is undernourished, it is not only the body that suffers, remember; undernourishment in a very subtle way destroys the capacity of your mind.
Mind needs its own nourishment, and unless the body is adequately nourished the mind cannot be nourished. But first the body has to be fulfilled. When there is something more than the body's fulfillment, then it goes to the brain cells. The mind is a luxury -- it does not exist in animals, it is a human prerogative. It came into existence only because man could manage his bodily needs so totally that there was energy left over, and that overflowing energy became his brain, became his mind, became his psychology.
When the psychological needs are fulfilled, totally fulfilled, and again there is more energy available, that energy is transformed into spirituality, into meditation, into Buddhahood.
But India is in a sad state, and the saddest thing is that Indians try to hide it rather than expose it. They are angry at me because I am exposing the truth as it is. They are angry at me because I am not trying to cover it up. They would like me, they would respect me, they would call me a great mahatma, an incarnation of God and all kinds of rubbish, but on one condition: that I go on covering their wounds.
I cannot cover anybody's wounds. I can heal them, but the healing process is a totally different process. First you have to expose your wounds to the sun, to the
wind. You have to expose them. It hurts! And wounds which have been kept secret for thousands of years, suddenly exposed... You cannot believe it. You have always believed that you are great spiritualists, and I see the whole phoniness of it, I see the hypocrisy of it. And the greatest hypocrisy that happens, happens through two denials: food and sex. These are the basic needs, and they are two sides of the same coin. They are not very different.
Food is needed for the existence of the individual. An individual can exist without sex. It will not be much of a joy, but he can survive. But without food the individual cannot exist; he will shrink and die. At the most, if he is perfectly healthy, he can exist without food for three months -- ninety days -- but that too only if he is perfectly healthy and if he has too much extra food accumulated in his body in the form of fat and other things. Then he can survive for three months.
That survival, remember, has nothing to do with religion; that is sheer cannibalism: one is eating oneself. When you fast you are eating your own meat, hence I am against fasting; that is the worst kind of meat-eating. You can fast and every day -- you will lose one kilo. Where is that weight disappearing to? You are digesting it. Within three months you will die.
The individual can exist for a little while without food, he can exist without sex -
- he can survive -- but the human race, the species, cannot exist without sex. That is food for the species. Sex is food for the species. Without sex humankind will disappear. And the people who have been teaching celibacy are murderous. The people who have been teaching celibacy Osho - The Goose is Out
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