"For example, Jews have never believed in celibacy. Even their rabbis are married. Jesus advocated celibacy – which is basically a Hindu concept. And from Hinduism it has reached to Jainism, to Buddhism, and perhaps to Christianity too.

"The Hindu monk, for ten thousand years at least, has been insistently trying to prove that celibacy is spiritual power, that it connects you with divine power, with God. This is simply absurd.

"Celibacy has nothing to do with holiness.

"And celibacy gives no power; on the contrary, it creates a conflict within you because you are trying to fight with your own energy. It weakens you. Your own power becomes divided; and a house divided against itself cannot be powerful. And it was because of celibacy that Tantra was born in India – which is just a revolution, a rebellion against Hinduism.

"Hinduism says celibacy is spiritual, and Tantra made sex spiritual – and Tantra is closer to biology, physiology, science, humanity. Tantra has never created any perversion; but Tantra never became a religion, it remained an independent philosophical approach. Anybody can follow it. There is no question that you have to believe in God, that you have to believe in heaven and hell or anything.

"Tantra is a tremendous meditation because sexual orgasm is your natural potentiality to feel, just for a moment, something of the beyond. Tantra uses orgasm and joins it with meditation, and what is only for a single moment can become your twenty-four hour state. And it makes it a scientific thing; that orgasm has nothing to do with the other person.

"While you are making love you come to a peak of tension, and because that tension relaxes, you feel a tremendous silence descending on you, a great relaxation – for a few moments no thought, no time. Everything has disappeared; there is only pure isness.

"Tantra says this is your natural gift, and it has been given to you so that you can find the way that it is possible for you to be without thoughts, relaxed, and the same orgasmic experience will follow. It has nothing to do with the other. And once you know how to relax, how to drop the thoughts, how to stop time, how to stop mind, you discover your pure isness."