Bruce Talks with Swamiji About Freud

Bruce: After I talked about my desire for religious life, I began telling him about a conflict I had had with one of my professors in English literature.  He was a Freudian, so he would explain the characters in all the novels and so on in a Freudian context and with Freudian terminology.  Everything was sexual – the mother for the son, this one for that one, and so on.  But I would always see it in terms of a religious essence.  I would see it in terms of a religious impulse, or some desire to understand God.  I would write my papers in that context, and he would always say, “The religious can also be interpreted as Freudian.”  So I didn’t do very well in the course.  I was mentioning this to the Swami, and he said, “Your professor is correct.”  I was surprised – I am going to an Indian swami, and he is saying that the professor was correct, that everything is based on sex and not religion!  This kind of pulled the rug out from under me when he said that.  Then he qualified what he’d said.  He explained that in the material world everyone is operating on the basis of sex; everything that everyone is doing is being driven by the sex impulse.  “So,” he said, “Freud is correct.  Everything is on the basis of sex.”  Then he clarified what material life is and what spiritual life is.  In spiritual life, there is a complete absence of sex desire.  So this had a profound effect on me.