Sex and Violence, Love, and Hate
So I want to, on the onset of this discussion or lecture here this evening, point out that it is not sex that’s the problem – any more than eating is the problem; but gluttony is a problem when eating becomes perverted. And what we have to do is to trace and find out what perverts. Why does a person’s appetite become perverted and makes them glutinous lust for food?
There’s the lust of the eye. One can lust the music and never satisfied with hearing. What Solomon says, that the eye is never satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hearing and there’s no fullness thereof. Paul says, you know, man, who strives for the mastery is temperate in all his ways. He does things in moderation and the proper time in a proper season. And the reason is the season – not season, the reason. Man that needs to be controlled by an understanding of propriety.
There are laws by which he is formed and and shaped and made. And as a man is not an animal subject to the moon or a romantic mood or some form of excitement or tease or temptation. Reason must be in control. Enlightened reason must be in control – not merely education. You can have all the education in the world and an education may be sound, but it will not restrain the beast of the man and the lust of the men for whatever it is.
When he’s confronted with the temptation, man has to have an understanding in a deepest sense. That sort of education, that sort of enlightenment alone can filter down through his mind and modify his senses. And now this leads me to a point that man can be created or molded or shaped in one of two ways: Beasts of the field, only one way.
Animals are shaped and molded by the pressure of their circumstance, the excitement, the stimulation. There was only one way for the animal to move and have his being. Therefore, the animal cannot help being what he is. He has no choice of being what he is. That can never be guilt. It is impossible for an animal feel guilty, because animals don’t have a soul. They don’t have free choice (or something like that) like people do. People, man (when I say “man”, I mean “women” too. Forgive me for being a male chauvinist pig), but mankind has a consciousness which enables him to reach within himself. Scan the inner universe for direction, enlightenment, and to reflect those secret movements of the soul in terms of intelligent action, love towards woman, towards his children.
The trouble is, as you know, something has gone wrong with the soul of man. Started a long time ago. And I call this the “Adam and Eve Sindrome” syndrome being meaning in the true sense of the word as being “sin”.
That is something has gone wrong inside the mind of a man, and every lecture I bring this forward because it will not be a lecture without it. Because every problem we have is based upon an original cause, repeating itself. Original cause – sin – of breaking away from this inner ground of reason; the way of moving and having our being with a result in symptoms we don’t know how to deal with. The symptoms of man, in his failing, (now I speak of men, “male”) and his sexual appetite. Because sex, ordinary sex (not lust) represents death coming alive.
We try to look at sex as something normal, because we identify with animals. We also identify with our animal self (in identifying with our animal self, I’m speaking of the soul identifying with its animal self). We’ve tried to think of this as just a normal function and we try to think that we’re like all other animals, and try as we may, we cannot really come to grips with the sexual thing, without understanding that it’s a failing. And to attempt to enjoy it as though it wasn’t a failing, but a virtue leads us into serious trouble.If you think anger is a failing, then you will be more careful about failing. If you think anger is a virtue, then aren’t you going to be more and more angry? And what does that going to do to you – may I ask?
