What is it that one wishes to forget through sex?

“When there are so many things calling, demanding your attention, you give complete attention to the thought of sex. What happens, why are your minds so occupied with it? Because that is the way of ultimate escape, is it not? It is a way of complete self- forgetfulness. For the time being, at least for the moment, you can forget yourself and there is no other way of forgetting yourself.”

-J. Krishnamurti

Acharya Prashant : J. Krishnamurti says that it is the wish to forget oneself that makes one cling to the desire for sex. So, the questionnaire is asking that in contrast to what Krishnamurti says, is it not the fear of losing ‘me’ that drives all desires? And then she asks, “Or are these two things the same?” You must understand the question.

Krishnamurti is saying that “We desire sex because we want to forget ourselves” and Priya (name of questionnaire) is saying, “We want to hold on to ourselves and that is why we crave for sex. We are afraid that we might lose ourselves, we want to hold and protect ourselves and that is why we go into desires, including sex”.

Priya you have rightly said that both of these are same. When Krishnamurti says that “Man wants to forget himself and that is why he goes into sex”, he is right.

What is it that we call as remembering oneself? What is it that you remember? What goes on in your mind? All the daily struggles, the content of consciousness. Everything that is marked by discontentment, discontinuity, fear, insecurity and the like. That is the content of mind. That is what man’s consciousness is all about — strife, concern. The moment you wake up, you lose that which you had in sleep. Thoughts arrive, and along with thoughts responsibilities, fears, plans and all the worldly matters arrive. They are load, they are pain. Man wants to forget them, man wants to get rid of them.

Krishnamurti is saying “Sex is a means to get rid of all the mental circulations, all the mental burden.” And you were saying that man craves because he fears losing himself”. That too is just the same thing. Man fears losing himself because he wants to live in his nature.

What is the fear of disappearance? What is the fear of losing oneself?

The fear of losing oneself is just the resistance, the reluctance to go against one’s primitive nature. Man’s primitive nature is ‘presence’, man’s primitive nature is ‘immortality’. And that is why whenever thought suggests to you that you might disappear, you severely dislike it. You severely dislike it because you deep down in your heart know that you are not supposed to disappear. But thought arises and thought says, “You may disappear. You may lose yourself. Something will go wrong.”

You cannot reconcile then. You do not know what is wrong. But you surely sense that there is something wrong when somebody tells about disappearance or loss or death. The thought that tells you that you will die, does not tell you “Why you dislike dying?”

Ask thought “Why does anybody dislike dying?” Thought will not be able to answer.

You dislike dying because you cannot die. Dying is an absurdity. Dying is an impossibility. Disappearance cannot happen. Yet the world comes with so much proof that disappearance happens. So, you are stuck.

On one side is logical proof, and on the other side is super-intuitive truth. I am calling it super-intuitive because it is far deeper than intuition. You cannot ignore either of them. You cannot as a rational human being with a brain, with reason, ignore the power of evidence and there is all the evidence in the world that you will disappear.

The world keeps disappearing. You cannot just brush that evidence aside. And, at the same time you also cannot silence that super-intuitive voice that keeps reminding you that you cannot disappear, you cannot lose. Now you do not know what to do? Are you getting it?

These two are one and the same thing. Krishnamurti is saying that “You want to forget all the substance of consciousness” and all the substance of consciousness is merely death, merely time, merely all that which is temporal. You want to forget that. Sex gives you an opportunity to forget that. In sex there is such immersion that thoughts stop. When thoughts stop, death stops, because all thought is death oriented.

All thought is about the limited and limited is death. So, sex in some way gives you a taste of your own deathless nature. That is what Krishnamurti is saying. And you too are saying the same thing.

You are saying that “Man is afraid of losing”. You are saying, “Man cannot lose immortality, man is afraid of losing it.” And Krishnamurti is saying “Man wants to lose mortality”. It is the same thing expressed in two different ways.

Krishnamurti is saying “Man wants to forget”. What does man want to forget? His mortality. And you are saying “Man does not want to forget”. What does man not want to forget? His immortality.

These two are just the same thing.