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is nothing more to it -- the materialist's standpoint.
Nothing is wrong in eating, drinking and merrying, but to stop there is stupid. There is much more to life. And one need not renounce the body; one has to use the body as a stepping stone to reach higher planes, as a jumping board to reach depths. The body is beautiful, I am not against the body, I am not anti-body; I am not anti-anything. I want everything to be used because whatsoever god has given to you has a purpose; you may know it. you may not know it. That's why I don't teach any renunciation. But man has to know that he has to go farther than the body, otherwise he will remain unfulfilled.
He has been given a palace and he just lives in the porch. The porch is beautiful, the porch is needed, the porch is part of the palace. But you need not make it an abode when the whole palace is yours. This is sheer foolishness, not to live in the palace and to just go on living in the porch.
The body is just the porch, a connection between you and the world, that's all, but it is not your total reality, just the most superficial layer. Go a little deeper and there is mind. And the joys of mind are higher than the joys of the body. The body needs only two joys: sex and food. That is the lowest kind of joy, the animal kind.
Mind knows better joys -- of music, of painting of poetry, of literature. Then the whole world expands. Suddenly you start enjoying the subtle things of life. What can food give you compared to the great music of Mozart? What can sex give you compared to great literature, poetry, painting? Once you have started enjoying the world of the mind, the body becomes just a small part in it. You can still enjoy food, in fact you will enjoy it better than before because some aesthetics will enter your eating. You can still enjoy your sex but now your sex will have a depth which was missing before. Something of music will be in it, something of poetry will be in it, something of the paintings that you have enjoyed is bound to be there, because whatsoever you enjoy enters your very fibres, your very cells.
A man who knows only sex and food knows nothing. His sex is very
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