Is Premarital Intimacy Wrong?

Sadhguru answers a student’s question on premarital unity and explores how sexuality was handled traditionally in Indian culture, while outlining how society today needs to approach it.

Considered among India’s 50 most influential people, Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, bestselling author, and poet. Absolute clarity of perception places him in a unique space, not only in matters spiritual but in business, environmental and international affairs.

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

Sadhguru, We as students stay away from our homes, From the familial, Emotional comforts. In terms of our careers, We move out seeking greener pastures. In that, We seek company in opposite sex. Some people get into relationships, Which gradually progresses to physical intimacy. Sadhguru, The question is then why as generations we cannot discuss it openly, Or is premarital sex still a taboo? See, This is not some kind of a prescription. This is an individual need. Right now, We must understand this, In this society, We handled human sexuality like this. Before a girl attains puberty, They are named, This is the boy you're going to marry at the age of six or seven. They don't marry, But they say, They keep telling him, Your uncle's son, This guy, You're going to marry him, You're going to marry him. They're telling him, You're going to marry her. So, They have not seen each other, They have not met each other, They have nothing going. But emotionally, They're being bound. Before they touch each other physically, They want them to be emotionally bound in a strong way. So, This is the technique of the culture, How they dealt with it. So, When you become or attain to your puberty, When your body blossoms into certain possibilities, Now your emotions are already with somebody. So, You handle your body, You don't go wild, Because your emotions are already attached to somebody. So, By the time they're fifteen, Sixteen, The girl gets married. By the time they're seventeen, Eighteen, The boy gets married. They get into agriculture or business or whatever, Whatever, Their activity. So, One important aspect of the life of the youth is settled. One thing is emotion, Another thing is a physical requirement. Both are settled at an early age. And of course, Those days children came within a year or two years. So, They got engaged and they got busy and they… life went on, All right? Today, Our lives have changed, Because by the time you finish education, Most people are minimum twenty-four, Twenty-five years of age. PhD means thirty… what, Thirty-five? I don't know what. It depends how kind your professor is. So, Let us say average education time is twenty-five years of age. By the time they get employment and settle down somewhere to reasonable financial security, Thirty years of time, All right? The peak of human hormonal function is between fifteen to thirty. You're not teaching people some ascetic way to live. You're not giving them some sadhana that they're transforming their energy into some other possibility and attending to something else. There is no such thing. And there's close proximity with the opposite sex. If you don't want to address it, Then you will create an unhealthy society, Very unhealthy society, Which unfortunately is finding expression in violent ways in our society, Because we've not addressed the fundamental needs of a human being. First thing is nourishment. If nourishment is taken care of, You must understand nourishment is survival. Once survival is taken care of, Naturally the species, This is not even individual, The species that you are is longing to reproduce. This is how it's built. It's longing to reproduce because this is survival of the species. If people don't reproduce, There is not going to be human race, Isn't it? So, Your body and your mind plays many tricks and how when you look at somebody, You suddenly think they're the most beautiful, Suddenly you think they're the most fantastic, We will discover later. Many things, But initially everything is clouded. See, I'm telling you, Let's say you are ten, Twelve years of age, You looked at people, They're quite normal. Suddenly you became fourteen, Every little bump on somebody's body is a world by itself. Simply because your hormones begin to influence everything. In a way, Your intelligence is hijacked by your hormones. Now, This is not to be judged as bad or good, This is a natural process. There may be a few people who will go beyond that. It's fantastic for them if they can go beyond that. They're not compulsive about it, They went beyond it. Fantastic for that person. But you expect the whole society to go beyond it, You're just stupid. Such a thing doesn't happen. So, Definitely the debate of when and how sexuality should happen has to come in. But now, We are still having a certain cultural aspects to us that we are a emotional lot. We are still an emotional lot. People suffer immensely when things happen without the needed emotions. A whole lot of people at least, There may be a few people who are above that, But a whole lot of people suffer. So, For our country, For our society, How to deal with this without causing a major disruption in the social structure is something that we must debate. You must do the research on it, How to do it.

Reviews

The question might not be answered, yet many thoughts provoked. Without ruffling any feathers! 🪶🪶🪶

The western evangelical would scream based on centuries of purity teaching, especially toward women. We treat premarital intimacy as ‘taboo’ as in a sinful/shameful thing while also glorifying in so many ways. No wonder we’re walking around tormented. May each one find their own path & reconcile with their own spirit what is beneficial for them.

I like it

Educational and informative about the practice of arranged marriage. It's not so terrible as I had originally thought.