“Sex is just a physical need for humans, just like every other animal, because that’s what the nature intends us to do…… keep reproducing.”
How many times have you heard this narrative? I guess a lot of times. In fact, this is the notion you are repeated to by that YouTuber or blogger to console you when you helplessly search for “How to get rid of sexual thoughts?”
I am not denying that our bodies have a demand for sex, for that’s how they are designed by Mother Nature to make sure that species of that particular body continue to live even when that particular body meets the dust. Prakriti wants one thing from you: birth of your baby, and from this will of the nature arises a desire for sex in any living being because that’s the only way we are provided with by nature to bring a new life into form.
That’s all correct, but that’s like the movie that finishes at interval i.e., it’s only half of the story.
It could have been said that our bodies want sex like animals with no problem whatsoever if it didn’t ignore the basic fact that a human is not an animal. You can’t compare everything that we do with animals and say “that’s normal and natural”, because the animals, unfortunately, don’t have the same level of consciousness as humans, and it would not be very fortunate for us if we don’t understand this.
Sure, a body-identified human is no different than an animal in any meaningful way, but when it comes to having the ability to rise out of the deep-coded identification, humans are the only species capable of that at this point of the evolution of life on this planet.
When a male animal the female animal or vice versa, it happens purely on the physical level; its body demands sex, it feels unsatisfied until it doesn’t get sex, so it goes out in the search of a partner, it finds a partner, have a good sex, and the animal is satisfied. It goes on doing its usual mechanical activities - be it hunting, or sleeping, or grazing. You would never find an animal feeling regret after sex, you would never find an animal forming fantasies about sex all day long.
Why?
Because the animal is fully satisfied on the sexual level after an intercourse. Why is the animal satisfied? Because an animal is nothing more than a physical body, and all it needs to lead a “good life” is to have its bodily needs met. No animal would ever demand anything other than food, shelter, and sex - just keep providing these things to an animal and it would never ask you for anything else. It would never say, “I have a purpose in life other than my bodily needs,” because the physical body is the entire reality of an animal’s existence. Its existence is limited to the body and the point where all its bodily needs are taken care of is the point where it would live a fulfilled life.
But it’s not as simple in case of humans.
As a human, your needs are not limited to body only, because YOU.ARE.NOT.A.BODY. Your needs are much more than that of body’s; if you were merely a body (like an animal), then you would have been satisfied as soon as your bodily needs were met but that’s not how things are with us, right?
Having the security of food, shelter, and sex, a human, unlike animal, still feels insecure; still longs to “be something”; still wants something more than that, and that urge to be more or get more proves that our needs are not confined at the level of body, they go beyond to the level of consciousness.
WE ARE CONSCIOUSNESS, and what does it need? It needs only one thing: liberation. Liberation from all the things it has tied itself to in the anticipation of getting freedom, which never comes, and thus, continues to suffer.
Just like all the other major focal points of the mainstream life, sex is also one of our attempts to fill the inner void, the hollowness that we feel deep inside ourselves throughout our lives being heavily attached to the surroundings. We need sex, not only to satisfy the hormones like an animal, but also to gain a sense of fulfillment apart from body unlike an animal, no matter how short it is.
You look at the stray animals or even the wild animals, how often do you find them having sex? Even though they are free to have it anytime they want, but we do not find them doing that very often, not because they repress their lust or practice celibacy or something, it’s because sex is only a physical thing for them and no living physical body would demand sex 24/7 just like no living physical body would demand food 24/7.
If I had a magic wand, I would give animals the ability to use Internet and show that there is no such thing as “porn traffic” on their Internet. Even if there will be such thing, it would not be as big of a source of the Internet traffic as it is in our case, because for porn to become part of the Internet, the urge for sex has to come from beyond the body, because if it’s coming from the body only then it can be easily satisfied physically, and if it arises from the mind, then we would find it occupying the parts of not only the Internet but our lives and giving us nothing other than dissatisfaction.
The fact that porn exists prove that our desire for sex constitutes but a little physical need as the larger chunk of it comes from the need to get very little dopamine hit of psalm in a sea full of elegy. There’s a reason why you would not prefer to have sex with one partner for your entire life; if fulfilling physical needs was the only thing we demanded of sex, that could be done very well with one partner, but the moment we feel that the actual thing we needed from sex - the lasting sense of fulfillment - is not provided by that one partner, we start losing interest and there we go in search of a new partner or, in many cases, a new video.
If sex was merely a physical need for us, we would give it the same place in our lives as the animals. We would not let it become a major driving force behind our actions and the way we live, but we find that it is one of the topmost important issues of the life of a normal person.
J Krishnamurti explains lucidly why we feel attracted toward sex the way we do:
“Sex is a problem because it would seem that in the act there is complete absence of the self. In that moment you are happy because there is the cessation of self-consciousness, of the ‘me’, and desiring more of it—more of the abnegation of the self in which there is complete happiness through full fusion, integration—naturally it becomes all-important.
So, the problem is not sex, surely, but how to be free from the self. You have tasted that state of being in which the self is not, if only for a few seconds, if only for a day,…so there is the constant longing for more of that self-free state…
Until you resolve the whole content of that conflict, this one release of the self, through sex, will remain a hideous problem.”
In short, sex opens up an oasis for a few moments in a life covered with the dry and infertile land of desert.
I hope I have articulated it well enough to highlight the distinction between sex for animals and sex for humans, and as we come to close this article, I think it would be of no damage if we talk a little bit of homosexuality in this context.
It would have been understandable to see homosexuals as “abnormal” or inferior if the very nature of humans was only prakartik i.e., if we were nothing more than the physical appearance of our bodies, but that’s untrue. The issue of sex is more related to the need of our consciousness to get liberated than the need of our body to get drained.
Looking at it this way, which is the only way of talking sense regarding this matter, do you still think a man sharing his bed with woman is meaningfully different from a couple of same sex sharing bed with each other?
Of course, not.
Both are looking for the fulfillment of the consciousness, it’s just that one’s way is accepted by the “moral code” of our society and seems “natural” while the other does not.
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As an asexual person, seeing sex framed as "the fulfillment of the consciousness" feels super bizarre (almost laughable) to me. I will 'fulfill my consciousness' in another, more satisfying fashion, thank you.