Tag: Natural

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Why do you think Sex is something bad? – 11 Feb 16

In the last days, I have been telling you of Ashrams where sex is forbidden, of disciples that have sex in those Ashrams although it is forbidden and of course about gurus who have sex but won’t admit it, again because it is forbidden. Forbidden by themselves. Due to the stupid idea that sex could somehow be bad.

I stick with this: it is stupid to believe sex in itself could be bad. Or, on the reverse, that it could be good to force yourself to a life in celibacy! Sex, the physical action, is the result of a natural physical need: the urge to reproduce. Additionally, it is often combined with the need for human closeness, both physically and mentally.

Obviously, rape is bad. Obviously, using sex as a way of manipulating someone else is bad. Obviously, getting addicted to sex in your mind is bad as well.

Sex in itself, however, is not.

It is the beautiful union of two people. It is an exchange of touch, of physical love as well as emotional one, of giving and receiving, exploring each other deeply within, trusting with the most intimate desires and wishes and an expression of love.

A person’s natural urges however have a big power and by controlling them, people in the past have always tried to take control over others. The urge for sex has been a very popular one to be controlled and religions across the globe have toyed with it! For thousands of years, priests of many religions and others of high posts in churches, temples and similar places were required to remain celibate. To suppress their natural urge.

The result is however not a bigger energy for other matters or a clearer mind, as it is sometimes described. That person also doesn’t have any greater powers just because he or she suppressed his or her desire! No, the result is abuse as we have seen it in all religions across the world! Priests molesting young children in their care, gurus abusing their disciples and so much more!

Of course religions won’t abandon thousands of years of this tradition. You however, the sensible, reasonable person reading these lines can make a conscious decision: you don’t need to follow any guru, priest or leader and especially not those who are preaching celibacy. A lot of them are not sticking to this themselves either and even if they do – why would you?

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Give yourself a Hand – why you should masturbate without feeling guilty! – 3 Jun 15

The day before yesterday I told you a bit about my definition of lust and why I think it is good. Yesterday then I finally could tell you why porn does not increase the number of rape incidents – in case some of you wondered. It was all about lust and sex – but today I would like to write about another way of reaching satisfaction: masturbation.

I actually received a comment on my views which I expressed yesterday. I mentioned that one always has the possibility to release lust by helping oneself. A person commented: ‘I don’t think sexual feelings are wrong. I can agree that they are natural – but masturbation is not! It is completely unnatural!’

Unfortunately this is a very commonly spread misconception and not only in India. It is something that teenagers get told when they start feeling sexual urges and want to explore them by using their own body.

Boys are made afraid that each time they spill their semen, they are wasting their life’s energy. The means that each time you masturbate, you cut off some of your lifetime. Masturbate too often and you won’t be able to enjoy a long life. Other parents tell that masturbation causes blindness. Who knows what such boys think when they see blind people! 🙂

Girls are anyway told not to touch themselves. They often get taught a very strange relation to their own body. While it is the sign of great manliness when a man has lots of desire, it is something shameful and sinful for women. Every talk surrounding their genitals is full of shame and guilt, including their menstruation – how could masturbation be accepted? When mothers don’t even tell their daughter more about sex than just to ‘let their husband do’? When women don’t want to use tampons or take vaginally inserted medicine because they are not comfortable touching themselves or fear losing their virginity in this way?

So I know it may not help a lot but maybe just give a few people something to think of when I write here: masturbation is one of the most natural things on this planet! Really, just take a look at the animals around you, they do it all the time! We have monkeys in the garden who love having sex with each other but who don’t mind when nobody else is there – they give themselves relief!

While I agree that we are a bit different from monkeys – even if not too much, as it sometimes seems – masturbation is completely natural for humans as well! It is scientifically proven that there is no medical issue if you help yourself reach orgasm from time to time. You won’t die earlier and you won’t be blind. On the contrary, sexual excitement and an orgasm flushes your body with a whole lot of good hormones, endorphins and more, releasing tension and letting you not only relax. You can concentrate better and are overall happier, as you have fulfilled one basic desire and need!

And just to let you know one thing: it doesn’t matter how much you tell me that you never do it nor that you have done it, we all know better – everybody does and has done it! The amount of guilt each person feels for it however varies greatly!

Of course, if you decide to believe in a god who would punish you for making yourself feel good, it’s your choice. Feel like a sinner – but I tell you, should you just decide not to believe in that guy, you will lead a happier life!

A life in which you can take the things in your own hands – literally!

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Lust – a natural, joyful Feeling – it’s sick to see it as Sickness – 1 Jun 15

A while ago, an acquaintance expressed his view on porn movies to me, mentioning that in his opinion these films create lust in people which is then in consequence the reason for an increasing number of rape cases in India. In short, he thinks the more porn people watch, the more women will be raped.

First of all and before going into further detail, I have to clear one thing here: lust is nothing bad. It is a natural sensation, emotion and feeling and we all have it. Men and women, physically able or not, from children to old people, it exists in every single one of us. Each of us has lust – in fact, if you don’t, something is wrong with you! We have varying levels of lust according to our physical situation due to various hormones in our body and of course our mental situation as well.

It is in normal circumstances also easily accessible. Actually, even a simple thought can bring lust. You don’t need a movie or even a picture for that! You can create that all on your own! Also a regular Bollywood or Hollywood movie can create lust – or just an idea that you have while sitting in your office, working on something completely different! At the same time, if someone has a problem and doesn’t feel lust at all, he can watch hours of porn without ever reaching to the point of lust!

Lust is not only natural, it is really beautiful as well! With your feeling of lust and especially when you have satisfied it, you are automatically drawn into feelings of happiness, of fulfilment and love. It gives you a joy and relief which, in my eyes, makes it impossible to be the reason for rape! There is no room for rape with this happiness. But more about this aspect tomorrow.

Lust has always been a part of this world. It is everywhere – from literature to art, from sculptures in homes to paintings in places of worship. With technology, such imagery has become available to everyone by just a click of the mouse. Unfortunately however the image of lust has still not changed that much.

Still today, a lot of people think lust is wrong. The more radical they get, the worse they think of lust, sex and everything around it. Being lustful is the proof of a sick mind. A healthy mind doesn’t have such thoughts and a pure body shouldn’t have such feelings, longings and desires either. You have to feel guilty if you enjoy sex or think of sex. Any feeling of physical desire has to be suppressed. That’s how very religious people believe in celibacy. Trying to achieve purity by asceticism.

I think this is what is really sick. Religion has put the idea in people’s minds that lust is wrong. It is a mindset which makes people sick, mentally and physically! Celibacy is completely unnatural. Any suppression of physical love-making, claiming to have the purpose of purity is totally unscientific but religion doesn’t care!

Suppression has inspired men and women to explore it even more, although in hidden, and then it bursts out in the really sick ways – as sex crimes which were committed because there was no other outlet to a natural urge!

Lust. For centuries it has had a bad reputation and I think it is about time to change that!

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What could be more natural than being naked? – 7 Sep 14

I have already told you that in 2006 I met a lot of nice people on that spiritual festival in Sweden. Among them was a Swedish couple who were also giving workshops on the festival but also joined many of my workshops. I got to know them a bit better not only at the festival but also after it. Let me tell you about that beautiful summer time.

This couple gave workshops, as I did, but they had a quite broad variety of subjects. I saw them painting with children, give body painting workshops and got to know that they also spoke about sexuality. They came to several of my workshops and enjoyed them as well.

In our free time, we somehow got to talk and so we got to know each other better. He was also a photographer and told me that in the past 20 years there was no day when he didn’t take a photo of something. I loved this dedication! He was taking photos on the festival and later on took some of me as well.

When they asked me about my plans after the festival, I told them that I had some free days. I didn’t have to be back in Germany until the next week. They spontaneously invited me – and with me my musician – to come to their home in Stockholm.

Of course I agreed – and right after the festival, we sat in their car and together drove to Stockholm.

They showed me around, I met some of their friends and I really enjoyed getting to know this country a little bit! After the beautiful nature at the festival, I expected a big city, something like Frankfurt, as it is the capital of Sweden. Instead, I found this wonderful place which was so much calmer than I had thought!

And the nature was still so close-by! In those very hot summer days, my friends decided, we should go for a swim. It took us ten minutes from the middle of the town to get just out in the jungle where I could see nobody but my musician, the couple with whom we stayed and their one friend who had come with us! We reached a lake, just in the middle of a forest, everything so green around and there was no other person!

My friends just went towards the bank of the lake, took off all their clothes and jumped in. It was so normal for them to swim there naked, they didn’t think twice about it! Well, when they were so natural about it, I thought it would be funny now for me to pretend being shy! So I just took everything off as well and joined them, bathing naked in the lake.

My Indian musician was hesitating and ended up keeping his underwear on and also didn’t go in as deep as we did, as he didn’t know how to swim.

It was the most beautiful swim I ever had! It was fully quiet around us, just the nature and us. There was no other person!

I don’t normally belong to the people who like to go to nudist beaches. I have seen many of them but I never felt comfortable to take off my clothes. Here however, it was a fully different matter! There was no sign saying ‘naked beach’ and not a border or indication on how you should behave swim, what you should wear. It was just natural.

From my visits in Denmark I knew that Scandinavians in general are more natural and easy about nudity. I had an unforgettable experience!

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How a lot of Nudity makes you lose your Erection – 6 Feb 14

I yesterday said that also women in burkas get raped, even though they are covering their complete body. Nobody can thus say that they wore revealing clothing. While this proves that clothes are not the reason for rape, it also gives evidence of one fact I always mention: any body part that you continuously hide becomes more and more sexy for the people around you because they don’t usually get to see it. Maybe it was this thought that made someone suggest there should be nudist colonies in India to fight the problem of sexual harassment!

While this may not be a serious suggestion for a nation-wide problem, especially in this culture of suppressing sexuality, there is some truth behind this idea which is why I would like to explore it a bit today.

In search for a relevant example, I had to think of my visits to nude beaches in many different countries around the world. While to some people it may seem funny that on my journeys I have been to nude beaches, I think it is not. I have always been with people who believe in a natural way of living and what can be more natural than your own naked body? And there is now the main point of the question already: why do you think it would be strange to go to a beach where everyone is naked? Because you imagine every man having an erection and staring at the women around him?

If you have ever been to such a place yourself you know that this is not the truth. I have been to nude beaches with big crowds of men, women, families, teenagers and children. Never did I see even one man with an erection.

Why? Because it is just natural to be naked and when everyone is, there is nothing special in it anymore, nothing that would be the cause for an erection. And nothing that would cause sexual harassment or an assault on a woman!

Society has created so much shame around the genitals that people in some countries gasp in shock when they think that there are such things like nudist beaches, resorts and colonies where people just live naked, just as they are, without covering anything. The more you cover up, the more you hide, the sexier it will become. If you start hiding your toenail tomorrow, it will become just as sexy as your genitals would be to most people today.

When you hide, people cannot see that they have nothing special, that billions of men and women have the same thing, the same body parts and the same urges, feelings and needs.

Now, I won’t start a naked community in our Ashram in order to prove my point but maybe someday the Indian government will follow this commentator’s suggestion and open some nudist colonies to prevent crime. Until that day comes however, India’s people still have a lot of change ahead of themselves!

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Hospitals and Doctors ask pregnant Women: Caesarian Section or Natural Birth? – 8 Dec 11

Yesterday Yashendu, Ramona and I spent the day in Delhi. We went there to choose a hospital where we will go when our baby decides it is time to be born. We had talked to several hospitals on phone from Vrindavan and from those had selected four which we wanted to have a look at and decide in which one we felt most comfortable. So we started early and were roaming around in the city the whole day with this task. When we were talking on phone and also at the hospital, the first question we were always asked was ‘Do you want to have a Caesarian or a normal birth?’

This question made us laugh on one hand but also provoked some serious thoughts on the other hand. While we were very sure that we wanted the birth to happen just natural and with as little medical help as possible, we know that many people answer this question with ‘Caesarian’ and opt for the operation. What I wondered about was why this question actually comes up.

The very first thing that people need to be reminded of is that pregnancy is not an illness and a pregnant woman is not really a patient. It is a very natural process and for thousands of years it happened just simply in a natural way. Nowadays we have the possibility, through modern medicine, to check on the health of mother and baby during the process. In this way doctors can help prevent certain tragic events and consequences for the new family. Obviously this can save lives and is the benefit of the progress of medicine.

This is why people usually go to a hospital for the delivery. They know that a doctor will be there to help in a critical situation, too. A caesarian is the emergency solution for such a critical situation. If the baby is lying the wrong way round and a breech birth is not possible, if the child has the umbilical cord around the neck and doctors fear suffocation for him or her, if they don’t hear any heartbeat anymore or if the baby has grown so big that a natural birth could endanger the life of the mother, doctors can decide that a Caesarian would be a much lower risk which could keep both, mother and child alive and at good health.

Obviously this is a decision that is taken according to the circumstances. With time unfortunately it seems to have become a matter of decision for the parents. It seems to be just another of those many decisions that parenthood will bring: which car seat should we pick, should we use cloth diapers or disposable ones and will we have a caesarian birth or not? Women who are afraid of pain believe that this is an easy alternative without realizing that surgical intervention always comes with a higher risk, even if it was planned.

Here in India there is another factor that lets people choose a C-section: the child’s birth horoscope. I wrote about this idea before that people believe they can influence the child’s future by having it born on the right day and the right time. You can decide, within a certain time frame of course, when you would like to have your caesarian birth. Painless, quick and most of all you can decide upon the planetary constellations at the time of the birth. People believe in astrological predictions and want to make their children successful, beautiful, intelligent and lucky by this.

This concept has led to such an increase of unnecessary Caesarian sections that some statistics say hospitals have a rate of 65% caesarian sections where only about 5% were actually necessary. Of course a Caesarian is more expensive than a natural birth without complications in which the doctor just monitors and examines whether mother and child are fine. This can be a reason for doctors to encourage parents not to even try having a natural birth. Many people in our surrounding have had a horoscope done and then decided upon the day of delivery to have their C-section birth.

It is simply not the right concept in my opinion. We have to get back to being more natural and should not mix superstition and medical science. The result is more and more surgical intervention and a distance and fear of a completely natural process.

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Rape in India connected with Suppression of Sexuality – 22 Jun 11

You know that while I am in Germany I keep on reading Indian newspapers online and stay informed about what is going on in India. In the last days I have noticed that there are so many really bad news about one topic that I thought I would like to mention it here, too. Here are some of those headlines:

Father rapes minor Daughter and shares her with 100 Others

Minor Girl gang-raped four Times in one Month

Teenage Girl raped by Father and Brother

Brave Woman exposes Father as Rapist

Daughter kills Father while keeping him from raping her

Women pulled off street into Van and gang-raped inside

Eleven Police Officers rape and murder 14-year-old

Field Working Woman attacked and raped

Schoolgirl kidnapped and raped on Way Home

Woman gang-raped and burnt alive

After unsuccessful Rape Attempt, Woman’s Eyes gouged with Knives

You could keep on writing this list with more and more similar news. When I read all these, it pains me and makes me very sad. What is happening? We claim that this country has a great, ancient culture, that it is the most god-conscious country, that it has brought some of the greatest saints and philosophers of all times and that still today, it is the place on earth where you can find spirituality everywhere. We have great women in the history of our country. We praise the strong family relations where everybody takes care of each other and nobody is ever alone. But still, the safety of women and girls is obviously so little ensured that there is more than a full page of news of how they were raped and sexually abused – by relatives and complete strangers alike.

This happens everywhere and in every other country but in most countries not as much as in India. Obviously, India is a very big country and has a big population but if you take the average and just look at the ratio, India has a high rate of sexual crimes against women and girls.

We may hear of those cases in which women and girls are actually raped or murdered but the newspapers don’t write about the sexual harassment that is happening every day. Women are touched inappropriately in public places and at home. They walk on the street and men shout vulgar lines to them, insulting them or prompting them to have sex with them.

What happens in those cases? There is a man who sees a female being. What comes in his mind? He does not see her as a human, as a respectable person. He sees that she is a soft woman, an easy target to satisfy his sexual urge. If it is a child or teenager, it seems easier but in the end it does not matter whether it is a one- or two-year-old baby or an 80-year-old woman. Such a man’s inner attitude towards women is reduced to their own sexual urge and so they see women as an instrument which they can use.

How come they have such an attitude towards women that they actually only think of her genitals when they see her? They imagine how it would be to have sex with her. I believe that in India we have a great problem of suppression. The whole topic of sexual intercourse and any kind of sexual activity is so suppressed that there is nothing else that these men can think of. They don’t have any natural outlet for their thoughts, feelings and natural urge. It is so taboo that they are not even supposed to think of it. What happens is that they don’t think of anything else. You cover and you hide, you don’t talk about it. Men who don’t have strong willpower and have experienced this suppression of their natural feelings a lot can commit this kind of crime. And there is not the question whether that man was educated or not – rapists come from every background.

We call India an enourmously spiritual country and in this complete religiosity we hide that there are such issues that need to be addressed! If someone has sex with another person without being married, it is such a big issue, the worst sin that you can commit. If that person was from another caste, honour-killing can even be the consequence. Still today, there is not enough awareness about this topic, people are against sexual education, they don’t even want to mention to their teenage children that something like sex exists. They curse the open sexuality of the west and tell that there, everyone has sex with everyone else. They don’t see that this is not true and that there is more awareness about such crimes in western countries. There are not that many men who act like evil. Controlled and suppressed sexuality explodes in this way.

I don’t advocate adultery or having sex with the next-best person you can find but Indian people need to relax a bit when this topic is concerned. And religion plays a major role in this suppression. If you don’t allow sexuality to be suppressed, it will not explode in this way that much anymore.

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Religion and the Idea of Enjoying Sex – 8 Jan 11

In yesterday’s diary I shortly wrote about that question whether you are supposed to have sex only for having a baby or if you are allowed to have sex for pleasure, too. I think I have made my stand pretty clear already. I don’t believe sex is something dirty or something that needs to be a taboo. It is natural.

If you should have sex only for having a baby and not for pleasure, you are actually right to have sex only when a woman is fertile. So calculating the dates would not be bad idea, otherwise you run the risk of having sex for nothing at all, without any result.

The question that I have now is whether you are allowed to enjoy the sex in that time or not? When you are making a baby, when you are trying to conceive, are you allowed to have fun? I can only guess that the answer is no. I imagine it to be as a duty then. It is your duty to reproduce. What a man has to do, he does, so when it is time, you get ready, do your duty and get done with it. No fun, no pleasure, only a result.

I already mentioned that God gave us this possibility to reproduce. Why, if we are not supposed to have pleasure, did He make it such a pleasurable experience? I was told that in earlier times Christianity told people that this was temptation that God gave us to test if we commit this sin or not. You should have sex without pleasure and of course only with your wife. So you think God, almighty as He is, would not know that everyone of us would enjoy this experience? Do you think God would trick us into becoming sinners? For me this philosophy is too strange to believe in.

In Hinduism and other religions as well as in many sects, this concept exists, too. People can show me scriptures in which somebody a long time ago wrote that sex should be had only for satisfying the urge of nature to reproduce and nothing else. I don’t care who wrote that and in what time. Most of those philosophers have lived hundreds and thousands of years ago, in another time, in other societies and maybe with a fully different thought in their mind than what you interpret into it. These people all were humans like you and me, thinking something and having their opinion. Today you and me think and write something down and maybe in a few hundred years someone will show it to their friends and say ‘See, here is written that we are all allowed to have sex and enjoy it!’ Just because it is old, does not mean it is the ultimate truth applying to all people on earth.

I believe that God gave us the possibility to have sex and made it enjoyable, so why should we not enjoy it?

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Jealousy – a Childish Emotion – 15 Mar 10

Today our friend Jennifer from the US arrived at the Ashram, too. When we have visitors like these days, it is always nice to see how open Suraj, Kanu and their smallest brother Chhotu are to people they don’t know. They are not at all shy but immediately approach them and you can see just how innocent children are. When I watched the kids today I saw how Suraj was sitting on Purnendu’s lap and the other two came and also wanted to sit. But they all wanted to sit alone on his lap, being jealous of the two others whenever they got the chance.

I thought a little bit about jealousy and I have to say that it is, too, just a natural emotion. However when an adult behaves in this way, it is childish. It is natural for adults, too, it is normal that this feeling comes up from time to time. If you feel jealous, allow it. If you struggle or fight with it, it will irritate you more. You can be jealous, but realize that it is not a grown-up emotion. So when you realize your feeling, accept it and let it go again. If there was a justified reason for it, express it. If it was not, express it to yourself and then let it go. There is no sense in being upset about the fact that you have this feeling. 

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Courses in Celibacy – 10 Mar 10

Sometimes it is funny for me how people try to live in old beliefs and times which just don’t fit into modern life situations. Some people try to adapt those beliefs or try to change and modify it to fit to the mind of modern people. Like this I have heard of a 6 months course in India for becoming Brahmachari. Isn’t that funny to hear? Last week I wrote about how the real meaning, the being one with the united soul, and how it is nowadays just used for a person living in celibate. If Brahmacharya is celibacy, what exactly do they teach in a course of Brahmacharya? 

This I got to know from a woman who told me she was in India for this course. Funnily enough I met another woman later who had a baby from the course leader himself, a guru who calls himself celibate. 

And one more word which I often hear people say to a celibate person is ‘Bal Brahmachari’. Bal means child so it refers to a person who is celibate from birth until today and celibate for these people means no sexual feelings. How can you say this? I wrote about this the other day and again I say that sexual feelings are just natural and this is how children also have them, they are just there. But children’s feelings are innocent. When an adult person raises his sexual feelings, he has an object in his mind. He is aroused by one person. But children have sexual feelings just without any aim. Is the title Bal Brahmachari now something greater title than just Brahmachari? Actually I feel that it will be more difficult for those who have already enjoyed, shouldn’t they be the better Brahmacharis?