Having sex, watching porn, and the quality of mind

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: Is engaging sexually with the man or woman somehow different than engaging with porn or can both these engagements be of the same quality of pure lust?

Acharya Prashant (AP): In an absolute sense, it doesn’t matter what makes you excited. It could be a body of a woman, physically present in front of you, or it could be a memory of a man or woman, or it could be the image of a man or woman on the screen of a computer. It doesn’t matter what excites you.

All excitement is fundamentally the same. And all excitement is equally the same in its failure and frustration.

If you are watching porn in order to be relieved, that relief is a superficial relief.

If you are mating physically with a woman in order to be physically or mentally relieved, even that relief is equally superficial.

So, at an absolute level, there is not much of a difference. However, there is a difference. The difference is that a physical man or a woman is more likely to be able to destroy your assumptions & dreams about himself or herself. The character on your computer screen is your slave. You might have paid to watch porn, you might be reading a fantastic, erotic novel, the characters there will not spring up from the pages or from the screen to disturb your concepts, to destroy your beliefs. They are tailor-made, they are designed to keep you in your illusions.

But the real man, real in the sense of being of flesh & blood, only to that extent real. But the real man or woman cannot ever be a total slave of your desires or money. Here the chances of being woken up from your deep stupor are higher. You might be thinking that your girlfriend is a gateway to your emancipation but she is likely to do something that will disturb your concepts. Even if you go to a prostitute, she is likely to do something that can probably wake you up.

It’s a matter of degree, it’s a matter of probability, it’s a matter of relative chance. The chance is higher with a man or a woman. The ability to observe too might be higher when you are there with a man or a woman in flesh and blood. It is not recorded in advance, it is not customized, it is not edited out, you can see everything.

A porn clip is duly sensitized.

There you cannot see everything but with a physical man or a woman all is available for observation.

Hence, the probability that your dreams would be shattered is more.

So, yes there is a difference between coitus involving two physical bodies & excitement that involves pornography.

And at the same time, at the absolute level, there is no difference.

Watch the full video here.

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