The Attitude Towards SEX 

 

  

This is my observation -- that the attitude towards sex is a very symbolic attitude; it shows everything about your whole life. So you will not be enjoying other things either, or only to a certain extent and then you will be stopping. A man who is afraid of happiness, joy, is always afraid of many things. You will go to a certain extent and then stop.

 

-Osho, “The Shadow of the Whip, #15”

 

 

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There is nothing wrong in pure, simple sex; it is natural. There is no need to hide it behind the beautiful word 'love'. There is no need to create a cloud of romance around it. Be simple, be true, sincere.

 

-Osho, "The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1, #8, Q6"

 

 

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Sex has been corrupted by the priests and politicians. Its innocence has been destroyed. Its joy has been poisoned. This is the greatest calamity that has happened to this unfortunate species called mankind. I want to give sex back its joy and its innocence and its spontaneity.

 

My whole effort here is to make sex pure again. Nothing foreign should be involved in it: no jealousy, no ego, no expectations. It should be a pure phenomenon: two persons in that moment feeling that they would like to communicate on a deeper level, that's all. No obligation, no duty, no commitment through it.

 

Sex should be playful and prayerful. That is what I mean by purity. By purity I do not mean anything moral. God forbid! It is morality that has made it impure in the first place. Sex is and should be amoral. And it will help both. Sex free from morality will be joyous, healthy and whole, and morality freed from sex will be sane and reasonable and rational and practical.

 

The commitment has destroyed the whole beauty of it. Now humanity has come to the point where commitments can be dropped and sex can become a simple joy, a very simple joy. Not that because you love the woman you have to marry her, or the woman has to marry you because she has made love to you. Not that now you have to be parents, you have to bring children into the world. Not that now you have to manage a house, that now you have to look at the financial problems. Those things have destroyed the very joy of it. The cost is too much.

 

And that's why people have lost enthusiasm for it: it asks too much, the price is too much. And the price has been made too great because the people who have managed this society were against sex. Power-seekers are almost always against Joy. That's why they seek power! Power is a substitute for love. Because they could not get love they want to get attention. And power-seekers are pathological. Unless one is insane there is no reason why one should seek power. These people are miserable and they cannot tolerate anybody else being blissful either.

 

Power-seekers don't allow sex just as fun. They know in what way it is a basic need. It can be exploited for many things -- for society, for family, for politics, and this and that; it can be exploited for many things. And it is such a basic need that people will have to agree, they will have to pay the price, whatsoever it is. Knowing the need of it the politicians and the priests have exploited it immensely.

 

They have made sex such a serious phenomenon while in fact it is the most non-serious thing. It is fun! It is god's gift to enjoy and celebrate. It is participating in the great festival that existence is. But the so-called leaders are all against it. Even to say that sex is fun is to provoke their anger. Sex is subversive to them. Sex is dangerous to them.

 

-Osho, “Only Losers Can Win in This Game, #2“

 

 

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My approach is neither worldly nor otherworldly. My approach is not of rejecting something but using it. My understanding is that whatsoever is given to you is precious. You may know its value, you may not know its value, but it is precious; if it was not so, existence would not have given it to you. So you have to find ways to transform it. You have to make your love more prayerful, you have to make your sex more loving. Slowly slowly, sex has to be transformed into a sacred activity, it has to be raised. Rather than sex pulling you down into the mire of animality, you can pull sex upwards.

 

The same energy that pulls you down can pull you upwards, and the same energy can give you wings. It has tremendous power; certainly it is the most powerful thing in the world, because all life arises out of it. If it can give birth to a child, to a new life, if it can bring a new life into existence, you can imagine its potential: it can bring a new life to you too. Just as it can bring a new child into the world, it can give a new birth to you.

 

-Osho, “The Book of Wisdom, #27, Q3”

 

 

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I teach you how to go deep in love. I teach you how to go deep in sex too, because that is the only way to go beyond. To go through it is the only way to go beyond it -- but my goal is to take you beyond. Now this is a problem, and I am going to be misunderstood again and again, all over the world. People have become accustomed: they think religious people have to be against sex; and those who are not against sex, how can they be religious? These have become deadly settled categories. I am unsettling all those categories, and I don't expect the world to immediately change so much from its settled patterns of mind. So I don't expect them to understand me either. When they misunderstand, I perfectly understand their misunderstanding. I have no false hopes. It will take years or centuries for them to understand me, but this always happens. 

 

-Osho, “The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2, #6, Q3”

 

 

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Sex has been called the original sin - it is neither original nor sin. [....]  sex is natural. There is no need to make any effort to get rid of it -- although I know a moment comes when you transcend it, that is something totally different. It is not by your effort that you can get rid of it; if you try to get rid of it you will fall a victim of perversions. Because for centuries man has been trying to get rid of sex he has created many kinds of perversions. Homosexuality has arisen because we have deprived people of heterosexuality. Homosexuality was born as a religious phenomenon in the monasteries because we forced monks to live together in one place and nuns to live in one place, and we separated them by great walls.

 

-Osho, “Be Still and Know, #1, Q3”

 

 

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Sex is not your creation: it is God's gift. Something tremendously valuable is hidden in it -- it is just a shell of your samadhi. If the seed is broken, the shell is broken, the flower will bloom -- but not by repression. You will have to learn inner gardening, you will have to become a gardener, you will have to learn how to use dirty fertilizers, manure, and transform manure into roses. Religion is the most delicate art.

 

-Osho, "The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty, #13“

 

 

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All life exists through sex, all life grows out of it. All that is beautiful is sexual. The cuckoo crying is not saying a prayer, it is a sexual call. And the flowers Flowering are not flowering for your dead so-called gods in your temples, it is a sexual flowering. All that is beautiful in existence is sexual. [....] In fact there is nothing more pure than sex. Sex is one of the purest experiences.

 

-Osho, "Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 1, #8, Q3"

 

 

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Sex is beautiful, sexuality ugly. And the difference has to be understood. Sex is a natural phenomenon; sexuality is unnatural, abnormal and pathological. When sex becomes cerebral, when sex enters into your head, it becomes sexuality. Now, the head is not the center for sex. That is getting into a confusion, it is getting upside-down, it is getting deranged. Sex is not the function of the head. But when sex enters in through the head it becomes sexuality. Then you THINK about sex, then you fantasize about sex. And the more you think, the more you fantasize about it, the more you will get into trouble. Then nothing real will ever satisfy you, because there is no limitation on fantasy, and reality IS limited.

 

-Osho, “Unio Mystica, Vol 1, #4, Q2”

 

 

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The word sex is very beautiful. The original root of the word sex means division – sex means division. If you are divided inside, then sex will be there. When you hanker after a woman or a man, what is happening? One of your parts is hankering to meet the other, but you are trying to meet the other outside. You can meet for a single moment; again you will be alone, because outside there can be no eternal meeting. Sex is bound to be just momentary because the other is the other.

 

If you meet your inner woman or man inside, then the meeting can be eternal. And when all divisions are lost this meeting happens. This is an alchemical transformation: your woman and man meet inside – you become one. And when you are one, you will have love.

 

-Osho, “When the Shoe Fits, #1”

 

 

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Now there is as much wrong information prevalent in the world about sex as is possible. Even in this twentieth century people are living with immense ignorance about sex, even people who you would think should know better. Even your doctor does not really know what sex is, does not know its complexity. He should know, but even doctors live very superstitiously; they also know things from the marketplace. In no medical college is sex taught as a separate subject -- such an immense, powerful subject and yet nothing is taught about it. Yes, the physiology of sex is known by the physician, but the physiology is not all; there are deeper layers: there is psychology, there is spirituality. There is a psychology to sex and there is a spirituality to sex; the physiology is only the surface. Much research has been done there, and in this century we know more than ever before, but the knowledge is not becoming prevalent.

 

-Osho, "The Guest, #5, Q8"

 

 

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You may not be the body but you are living in it, and the body has its needs which have to be fulfilled. A religion that does not accept the body is only a half religion, and can only give you a half mutation. Half of you will remain undeveloped and that half will function as a rock around your neck.

 

One has to grow as a total unity. And if one has to grow as a total unity then everything has to be accepted, nothing can be denied. Of course, everything has to be used for a higher harmony. Sex is not to be left just as sex -- that is vulgar. Sex has to be transformed for a higher harmony, and then it becomes love, and love becomes prayer. It goes on and on; more and more refined forms of energy. And ultimately sex itself becomes the energy we call God.

 

Sex is the lowest denominator of the same energy we call God. It is the first step to the same temple. And if you deny the first step, you can never reach to the second -- then you can never enter into the temple. Sex has to be accepted, used, and left behind; not renounced -- left behind. And remember, the distinction is great: not renounced, not dropped -- left behind. You go on growing, and by and by you go so far away that the first step is left behind and you are in the innermost shrine. But that first step helped you to reach there, and you are grateful.

 

-Osho, “Hammer on the Rock, #10”
 

 

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Freedom from sex is not repression of sex, it is the understanding of sex. And through understanding one goes beyond it. But that does not mean that you will be angry and against and antagonistic. You will be blissful, you will have a blessing for everybody. And you will bless with the hope that some day they will also go beyond it.

 

Real religion has to be rooted in the earth. Yes, real religion also has to rise towards the sun. It is like a lotus flower -- rooted in the mud and rising towards the sun. The lotus has to be freed from the mud, but the mud has not to be condemned at all, because the mud is the nourishment. Your sex energy is the nourishment for your SAMADHI. It is out of the mud of sex that the lotus of SAMADHI IS going to bloom. Never repress it! Never be against it; rather, go deep into it with great clarity, with great love. Go like an explorer. Search all the nooks and comers of your sexuality, and you will be surprised and enriched and benefitted.

 

Knowing your sexuality, one day you will stumble upon your spirituality. Then you become free. Your energy has risen high. Now sex is just like a toy. But you are not angry with other people who are still playing with the toy. You will understand them too, you will have compassion for them. You would like to help them go beyond, but you will not condemn them and you will not want to throw them to hell to be punished. They are not doing anything wrong.

 

Sex is not a sin. Nobody is ever punished for sex. Nobody ever goes to hell for sex; otherwise God would be responsible, not you. He has given it to you, you are born with it; you have not created it. It is nothing like your invention, it is not like an atom bomb, it is not like a bayonet, it is not like a sword, it is not like money, it is not like politics -- these are inventions of man, of the ugly human mind. These people will go to hell, certainly.

 

But sex is a God-given gift, and it is a great seed. And in the seed is hidden SAMADHI. Once it starts sprouting and finds the right soil, it will become a big tree. Millions of flowers will come to it.

 

It is not only a child that is born out of sex, it is out of sex that you will be reborn too! Sex is the generating force, sex is the very source of creativity. It is out of sex that new life is born. You will give birth to a child -- this is new life, God coming in another garb, another manifestation, another incarnation of God in your child; but it comes through sex. Just watch it. Sex must be immensely valuable -- God has chosen it to be the passage for life.

 

What is more valuable than life? What CAN be more valuable than life? God has chosen sex as the vehicle for life. Life comes through sex, in sex, out of sex. And those who know, those who have gone beyond say that another life, spiritual life, also comes through it. Not only your child is born through it, you will be reborn through it: you will become twice-born through it, you will resurrect out of it. It is life-giving energy.

 

Sex has to be respected. Sex is sacred. Sex is the very temple of God.

 

-Osho, "I Say Unto You, Vol 2, #4, Q1"

 

 

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I am not against sex and I am not for love. You still have to transcend it. Meditate on it; transcend it. By meditation I mean you have to pass through it fully alert, aware. You must not pass through it blindly, unconsciously. Great bliss is there, but you can pass by blindly and miss it. This blindness has to be transformed; you must become open-eyed. With open eyes, sex can take you on the path of oneness.

 

-Osho, "The Psychology of the Esoteric, Talk #3, Q1"