First, sex shows your deepest dependence. It shows that somebody else is needed for your pleasure. Without somebody else that pleasure is not possible. So you depend, your independence is lost. This hurts the ego. So the more a person is an egoist, the more he will be against sex. Your so-called saints are against sex – not because sex is bad, but because of their egos. They cannot conceive of themselves being dependent on somebody, begging for something from somebody. Sex hurts the ego most.

Secondly, in the very phenomenon of sex the possibility of rejection is there – the other can reject you. It is not certain whether you will be accepted or rejected; the other can say no. And this is the deepest rejection possible, when you approach somebody for love and the other rejects you. This rejection creates fear. The ego says it is better not to try than to be rejected.

Dependence, rejection, the possibility of rejection – and still deeper, in sex you become just like animals. That hurts the human ego very much, because then there is no difference between a dog making love and you making love. What is the difference? Suddenly you become like animals, and all the preachers, moralists, they go on saying to man: “Don’t be an animal. Don’t be like animals!” That is the greatest condemnation possible.

In no other thing are you so animal-like as in sex, because in no other thing are you natural – in everything else you can be unnatural. Eating food – we have created so much sophistication about eating that you are not like animals. The basic thing is like the animal; but your tables, your table manners, the whole culture, the etiquette you have created around food is just to make it distinct from animals.

Animals like to eat alone. So every society creates in the mind of every individual that to eat alone is not good. Share, eat with the family, eat with friends, invite guests. No animal is interested in guests, in friends, in family. Whenever an animal is eating he wants nobody to come near; he goes into aloneness. If a man wants to eat alone you will say he is animal-like, he doesn’t want to share – his habit of eating is natural, not sophisticated. Around food we have created so much sophistication that hunger has become less important, taste has become more important. No animal bothers about the taste. Hunger is a basic necessity – hunger is fulfilled, the animal is satisfied. But not man – as if hunger is not the point; something else is the point. More important is taste, more important are the manners, more important is how you eat, not what you eat.

In everything else man has created his own artificial world around him. Animals are naked – that’s why we don’t want to be nude. And if somebody is nude suddenly it hits our civilization totally, it cuts the very roots. That’s why there is so much antagonism against naked people all over the world.