And why were these people against sex? They are different in their attitudes about everything except sex. About sex all religions agree; that seems to be the only agreement amongst religions. So it seems to be tremendously important that we should go deep into the whole phenomenon: why they are afraid of it. They are afraid of sex because it is the greatest energy in man, the most powerful pull of nature and biology. There is no way to destroy it. Either you can condemn and repress it, or you can understand and transform it. But the second is a long and arduous path and needs tremendous intelligence, awareness – because sex is an unconscious force in you. Each cell in your body is made of it, is vibrant with it. Your conscious mind is nothing compared to your unconscious sexual energy; hence the fear that the unconscious can take possession of you any moment.

But to repress seems to be easier. Repression needs no intelligence in the first place; any idiot can do it. In fact, only idiots do it. I have been surprised, seeing hundreds of monks in India belonging to different religions – they are all repressing their sexuality. My surprise was that the more they repress their sexuality, the more stupid they become, exactly in the same proportion. Repressing nature is such an idiotic effort that it is bound to destroy your intelligence.

The Jaina monk is the most repressive of all in the whole world. There are only twenty-two Jaina monks left in India who live like Mahavira: naked, following exactly the ancient path. I have met all the twenty-two, because I was roaming all over India, so it was not difficult to meet these people or anybody I wanted to meet; sooner or later, somewhere or other it was bound to happen. Strange, all twenty-two are in the same way, stupid – no sign of intelligence. You cannot see a single ray of light in their eyes. They are dull, dead. It has to be so, because they have been repressing life energy, life force.

When you repress life energy you will become dull. And the methods you are going to use to repress life energy are bound to make you more and more stupid. For example, they cannot eat even twice a day. They have thousands of rules – so they can eat only a few things, which cannot provide them with all the vitamins, proteins, which are needed for intelligence to function. They are starving. And intellect is a luxury. When all the needs of your body are fulfilled, only then intellect gets energy, because it is at the highest level of your being. If on the lower levels your energy is starving, then it cannot rise to reach to the higher levels.

A Jaina monk’s food is absolutely devoid of proteins. He’s not a meat eater, and I am not suggesting that he should eat meat. But I have suggested to them, “You can use soya bean, which is as good as meat, or even better.” But those fools will not use the soya bean because it is not written in their scriptures – at that time the soya bean was not discovered. I have argued with them that it is not non-vegetarian, it is vegetarian. They say, “It is vegetarian, but it is not written in the scriptures. And Mahavira, who is omniscient, must have known better than anybody else what has to be eaten.”