Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 into an Indian Gujarati Hindu Modh Baniya family in Porbandar, a coastal town on the Kathiawar Peninsula. Wikipedia describes him as an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist, who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India’s independence from British Rule, and in turn inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.
The majority of people in India have always respected him as Mahatma–and he was certainly a great soul. And the world is remembering him with utmost reverence on his 150th birthday. The great scholars and the psychologists have been doing a lot of research into the making of this amazing personality and their findings are really worthy of great interest for all of us. Even the enlightened mystic Osho has talked a great deal in his wonderful discourses about Mahatma Gandhi. The Mahatma sacrificed his life for the nation, renounced all the pleasures of life and struggled with his sexuality towards the last years of his life. He had children but later he took the oath of celibacy. He preached the same way of life to his followers, though there’s a possibility that many times he was in self-doubt. But he maintained his image of a Mahatma also with his inner strength. Happy Ho organizes best Meditation and Tarot classes in Noida and Delhi NCR area in India.
The Independent, a newspaper published from London, reported on 2 January 2012: He spoke constantly of sex and gave detailed, often provocative, instructions to his followers as to how to they might best observe chastity. And his views were not always popular; “abnormal and unnatural” was how the first Prime Minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, described Gandhi’s advice to newlyweds to stay celibate for the sake of their souls.
The biographer Jad Adams writes: But was there something more complex than a pious plea for chastity at play in Gandhi’s beliefs, preachings and even his unusual personal practices (which included, alongside his famed chastity, sleeping naked next to nubile, naked women to test his restraint)? In the course of researching my new book on Gandhi, going through a hundred volumes of his complete works and many tomes of eye-witness material, details became apparent which add up to a more bizarre sexual history.
“Much of this material was known during his lifetime, but was distorted or suppressed after his death during the process of elevating Gandhi into the “Father of the Nation” Was the Mahatma, in fact, as the pre-independence prime minister of the Indian state of Travancore called him, “a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac”?Wikipedia also talks about his experiments regarding sexuality and celibacy: Gandhi tried to test and prove to himself his brahmacharya.
“The experiments began some time after the death of his wife in February 1944. At the start of his experiment he had women sleep in the same room but in different beds. He later slept with women in the same bed but clothed, and finally, he slept naked with women. In April 1945, Gandhi referenced being naked with several “women or girls” in a letter to Birla as part of the experiments.
“According to the 1960s memoir of his grandniece Manu, Gandhi feared in early 1947 that he and she may be killed by Muslims in the run-up to India’s independence on August 1947, and asked her when she was 18 years old if she wanted to help him with his experiments to test their “purity”, for which she readily accepted. Gandhi slept naked in the same bed with Manu with the bedroom doors open all night. Manu stated that the experiment had no “ill effect” on her. Gandhi also shared his bed with 18-year-old Abha, wife of his grandnephew Kanu. Gandhi would sleep with both Manu and Abha at the same time. None of the women who participated in the Brahmacharya experiments of Gandhi indicated that they had sex or that Gandhi behaved in any sexual way. Those who went public said they felt as though they were sleeping with their aging mother. “
I don’t have any intention of criticising Bapuji by publishing these quotes from this Western biographer. Mahatma Gandhi is a great example that represents all human beings–their weakness and strength–and we can certainly learn a lot from his life, instead of following him blindly or worshipping him as Mahatma. He experimented boldly without bothering about what his followers would think or judge him as a weak person. This boldness is needed in all of us who are the seekers on the path.
Finally, let us understand what the enlightened mystic Osho’s take on this subject is. In his talk on “Religion is the Most Delicate Art”, Osho says: A man like Mahatma Gandhi continued to have sexual dreams. That simply shows that his whole effort in the waking life was futile and that whatever he was trying to do in the waking life was of no use. He recognized it. At the very end of his life, he recognized the whole futility of his discipline. His whole life had been wastage and he recognized it. In the end, just before he died, for two years he was experimenting with the science of Tantra. It is not talked about, not at least by the Gandhians. They are very afraid of those two years. He was advised by his followers, “Please, don’t do such experiments.” You will be surprised that even Morarji Desai had advised him, “Don’t do such experiments.” Why? – they were afraid about the prestige of the Mahatma. They were afraid of themselves too. But he was a man of courage; however wrong, he was a sincere man. He had the courage to accept that his effort of disciplining according to the traditional way had failed. In the last two years, he was sleeping with naked women. For the first time not repressing but expressing, being loving, open; for the first time not on guard.
My own understanding is that those two years of his life, which are not talked about, are the most important. Not only were they not talked about, but the followers also deny, hide those facts. Those two years are the most important in his life. In those two years, for the first time, he became aware that sexual energy need not be repressed. It can be transformed.
Osho adds: His life was cut short because a fanatic from this very city, Pune, killed him. Otherwise, it would have been a totally different story. If he had lived ten more years, all these so-called Gandhians would have left him. Many had already left when he started experimenting with Tantra. If he had lived ten more years, it would have been a great boon to humanity because he would have been able to say, “My whole life’s effort of repression failed while Tantra succeeded.”
Ninety-nine percent of religious people go on repressing and whenever you repress something it goes deeper in you, it becomes more a part of your being. It starts affecting you in such subtle ways that you may not even be aware of it. It takes very devious routes; it cannot come in direct ways because if it comes directly, you repress it. It comes in such subtle ways, such devious ways, such deceptive ways, with masks, that you cannot even recognize that it is sexuality.
It can even use masks of prayer, love, religious ritual. But if you go deep down, if you allow yourself to be exposed to someone who can observe and who understands the inner functioning of your mind, you will be surprised that it is the same energy moving through different channels. It has to move through different channels because no energy can ever be repressed.
Let it be understood once and for all. No energy can ever be repressed. Energy can be transformed, but never repressed. The real religion consists of alchemy, of transforming techniques, methods. The real religion consists not of repressing the animal but of purifying the animal, of raising the animal to the divine; using the animal, riding on the animal to go to the divine. It can become a tremendously powerful vehicle, because it is power
