116 QUESTION: I think it must be difficult to answer my next question. It may be a foolish one, in a way, but in thinking of the sex angle, when people are unmarried and unattached and are seeking a happy relationship, how much promiscuity do you advocate?
ANSWER: I do not advocate promiscuity at all. What do you mean by promiscuity?
QUESTION: You speak of the sex instinct as natural and right. But just how far do you go?
ANSWER: The only answer, my dear friend, that I can possibly give you – and it would apply to this question, as well as to any other, for that matter – is that if people do what they feel within their deep inner self, uninfluenced by the superimposed conscience, as being right for them, then it is right. And this does not necessarily have anything to do with the happy or unhappy outcome of the situation.
If they can approach it wholeheartedly, without being divided, taking full responsibility for all consequences, fully committed to the relationship on whatever level it exists, if no false morality blurs the issues and thus hampers the real morality, then there is no wrong. There is perhaps no other subject in which so much self-responsibility is shifted to the rules, merely because one is afraid of taking risks.
This world would be a very different place if more people were to do whatever they do wholeheartedly, be it a human relationship, be it reading a book or taking a walk, or going through a conversation. This planet is such an unhappy place because people are torn; they do not do one thing without being divided in attention and motivation.
There is rarely a full commitment in anything people do. They serve two, three or ten masters at the same time, but not their own real self. People want to have everything cut out to perfection, insisting on a guarantee against all mistakes, knowing perfectly well that this cannot be.
The outlook from the plane from which I am talking is so different from yours that the words often do not even mean the same thing. When you raise your consciousness, you will come to a different understanding of concepts, terms and values.
From our point of view, promiscuity may be one single act, with all the sanctions of human society, if this act does not stem from a complete commitment. If we use this word at all, it can certainly never apply to the quantity, but only to the quality invested.
As long as humanity approaches any question, whether it is of the type you have asked, or political, social, religious, or relating to any other human activity or attitude, from the viewpoint of ready-made rules in which one thing is right and another is wrong, you still live under the yoke of the superimposed conscience which is supposed to make everything so easy and simple. You still are torn and paralyzed by the fight between the primitive little child in you and the superimposed conscience. If you were not engaged in this fight, such questions could not even be asked. Such a question is the expression of this very condition I mentioned.
I do not want to be misunderstood. I certainly do not advocate license. Maybe in a different way, the real self might have stricter standards than those of the superimposed conscience. The real self’s standards are often more difficult to obey because they might demand that you oppose public opinion. But the strictness may lie in a different direction. The real conscience is very discerning about any kind of self-deception. It is adamant against cheating when one tries to cheat life, often using the superimposed conscience and the ready-made rules as a shield against complete commitment.
