Osho on Love and Sexuality

 

 

A conditional love is nothing but an infatuation, sexuality. Unconditional is the only way love can be. Wherever a condition comes in, love disappears. It cannot live in bondage, and a condition gives it an imprisonment. Love can only live like the vast sky. Love knows no boundaries.

 

-Osho, “Come Follow To You, Vol 4, #1”

 

 

 

Sexuality is possible without any understanding, without any meditation. Love is possible only with understanding. Compassion is possible only with understanding and meditation, understanding and awareness. Not only do you understand and respect the other person, but you have come to your deepest core of being. Seeing your own deepest core, you have become capable of seeing the deepest core in the other also. Now the other does not exist as a body or a mind; the other exists as a soul. And souls are not separate. Your soul and my soul are one.

 

When two bodies meet, they are separate. When two body-minds meet, their boundaries are overlapping. When two souls meet, they are one. Compassion is the highest form of love. It is possible only for a Buddha, or a Christ, or a Krishna to have compassion.

 

-Osho, “The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 2, #10, Q3”

 

 

 

There are two ways: either repress sex -- as has been done by all the so-called religious traditions of the world -- or transform it.

 

I am for transformation, hence I teach my sannyasins to be creative. Create music, create poetry, create painting, create pottery, sculpture -- create something! Whatsoever you do, do it with great creativeness, bring something new into existence, and your sex will be fulfilled on a higher plane and there will be no repression. Let your sex become more and more love and less and less lust. And then finally let your love also become a little higher -- that is prayer. Lust is the lowest form of sex, love higher than sex, and prayer is the ultimate transformation.

 

The meditative person can transform his sexuality without any antagonism. without any conflict. He is in deep friendship with all his energies, sexual or others; he is not in any fight. Why fight with your own energies? Love them, rejoice in them, and help them to transcend the lower forms, the animal forms. Let them move from the body towards the turiya, the fourth.

 

This is a total!y different process. That's why I am so much opposed, because I am against all the repressive traditions, all the so-called moral, puritanistic stupidities. I simply call them stupid. I am not a polite person. If a spade is there I call it a spade -- in fact, a fucking spade! I want to be clear and straightforward. Two plus two is four to me, neither more nor less.

 

-Osho, “I Am That, #14”

 

 

 

Sex is momentary, love has a longer period for it -- it lingers slowly. Compassion is eternal, it is timeless. Whether somebody is there or not is not the question then. A man of compassion has compassion. Buddha sitting under his bodhi tree is as loving as when he is surrounded by his sannyasins. When he is moving in the crowd he is as loving as when he is alone. Now love is a state.

 

If you want to change from sex towards love, try to understand your sexuality. Watch it, watch the mechanicalness of it. See the futility, see the whole absurdity of it -- it is not leading you anywhere. Become a little more refined, become a little more subtle. Look not for the body, but somebody's being. Watch, explore. Sooner or later you will find somebody who fits with you.

 

-Osho, “The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 2, #10, Q3”

 

 

 

Ordinarily we think sex makes people loving — sex can never make people loving. In fact, it is sexuality that prevents love from growing — because it is the same energy that has to become love. It is being destroyed in sex. To become love, the same energy has to move to the heart centre.

 

HINAYANA works at the sex centre -- MULADHAR. MAHAYANA works at the heart centre -- it says love, prayer, have to be developed now. Energy is there, now you can love. Energy is there, now you can pray.

 

MAHAYANA is loving-effort. One has to love unconditionally -- the trees and the rocks and the sun and the moon and the people -- but now love has no sexuality in it. It is very cool, it is very tranquil.

 

If you come near a person whose energy is moving in his heart centre, you will suddenly feel you are moving under a deep cool shade, no hot energy. You will feel suddenly a breeze surrounding you. The person of love, the person who lives at the heart centre, is to a traveller like a shady tree, or cool running water, or a breeze fragrant with many blossoms.

 

MAHAYANA is not afraid of sex. HINAYANA is afraid of sex. HINAYANA is afraid of sex because you are too much obsessed with sex. You have to move to the opposite. MAHAYANA is not afraid of sex -- it has attained to the balance; there is no fear of the opposites. MAHAYANA is when the tightrope-walker is balanced; he neither leans to the left nor to the right.

 

-Osho, “The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3, #7”

 

 

 

A boyfriend or a girlfriend may be fun, but cannot become a door to the deepest that is hidden in each and everyone. With a girlfriend you can be sexually related, but love cannot grow. Love needs deep roots. Sexuality is possible on the surface, but sexuality is just animal, biological. It can be beautiful if it is part of a deeper love, but if it is not part of a deeper love it is the most ugly thing possible; the ugliest, because then there is no communion — you simply touch each other and separate. Only bodies meet, but not you — not I, not thou. This has happened in all relationships.

 

-Osho, “The Mustard Seed, #1”

 

 

 

Love is possible, but it never rises above sex. Hence all the cheeks are full of tears... wet. I can see your cheeks full of tears, tears rolling down. One of the greatest miseries in human life is that one remains with sexuality and never moves beyond it and never achieves a moment of love.

 

Love is born in sexuality but sexuality is not love. The lotus is born in the mud, but the lotus is not just mud. And if mud remains mud of course there are bound to be tears on the cheeks.

 

You are waiting to become a lotus, you are waiting to flower in higher space, and you remain rooted. This is happening down the centuries. There have been very few individuals who attained to love. Then they have smiles on their faces, then you can see the grace, the beauty, the beauty of the unknown descending in them. Love transforms.

 

Sex at the most is a release. Hygienic, healthy, I'm not against it, it's natural, but it is not the end, just the beginning. It is the very alphabet of love, but you have to make poetry out of it. All the poetry can be reduced to the alphabet.

 

-Osho, “The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 1, #4, Q2”

 

 

 

Love can exist only after meditation, not before it. That is a simple existential law. Before meditation — only lust, only sexuality. Before meditation you are an animal and not really a human being. With meditation a transformation comes: you become human, and out of your humanness, love flows.

 

-Osho, “The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, #10, Q1”

 

 

 

Beware of lust, unconscious sexuality. When sex becomes conscious it has a totally different flavor. It becomes tantra, it is no longer sex. When sex becomes conscious it is love, it is no longer lust. Love brings freedom, and lust simply creates prisons for you.

 

-Osho, “The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 7, #3”

 

 

 

Sex can be explained, love cannot be explained. Hence, sex becomes a commodity -- it can be sold, it can be purchased. Love is not a commodity; you cannot sell it, you cannot purchase it -- there is no way. Sex can be explained because it is part of physiology. Love cannot be explained -- it is part of your inner mystery.

 

Unless your sexuality rises and reaches to love it is mundane, it has nothing sacred about it. When your sex becomes love, then it is entering into a totally different dimension -- the dimension of the mysterious and the miraculous. Now it is becoming religious, sacred, it is no longer profane.

 

-Osho, “The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 2, #6, Q2”

 

 

 

Sex can be transcended and should be transcended, but transcendence has to be not against nature but with nature, Through nature. Accept your sexuality — it is part of you! and a tremendously important part. You are born out of sex. Each cell of your body is a sex cell. Sex energy is your life energy! — respect it, it is a gift from God. Understand it. Be more and more meditative about it. But drop all prejudices, drop all condemnations. because when you carry a condemnation you cannot understand a thing. Drop all judgements. Sex is sex — it is a pure natural energy. With great acceptance, love, respect, meditate over it. Go deeper and deeper into it to see what exactly it is. And in that very seeing you will be going beyond it.

 

The day one has known what sex energy really is, one has transcended. Sex disappears, but it disappears not by denying. But by understanding. And the disappearance is not really the destruction of the energy but a transformation. In existence nothing is ever destroyed, things are only transformed.

 

It is sex when it is transformed that becomes love. And it is love when it is transformed that becomes prayer. And it is prayer in its ultimate transformation that becomes God.

 

-Osho, “The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty, #11, Q3”

 

 

 

The person who is free of sexuality, whose sexuality has become a transformed phenomenon, is also free of money, is also free of ambition, is also free of the desire to be famous. Immediately all these things disappear from his life. The moment sex energy starts rising upwards, the moment sex energy starts becoming love, prayer, meditation, then all lower manifestations disappear.

 

-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 2, #5, Q4“

 

 

 

Love is creative. Sex is destructive. And there is a lot of difference between the two. Sometimes you start thinking that your sexuality is your love. Then you are deceived. Sexuality can play the game of love, but it is a counterfeit game. I am not against sex, but I am certainly against sexuality. And the difference is that sex is a natural thing and sexuality is a mind thing.

 

To love a woman is natural, to love a man is natural. To reproduce children is natural, nothing wrong in it. But to think about women, to carry pornographic pictures, to fall asleep every night thinking about women — women and women and women — that is sexuality.

 

-Osho, "The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 2, #4, Q3“

 

 

 

When you are in sexuality you don’t bother much to whom you are making love — any body will do. You just need a woman or a man, any body will do. You just need the other’s body. In love, any body won’t do, anybody’s body won’t do. You need a person who is in deep love with you, who has a certain affinity and harmony with you, in whose presence your heart starts singing, a deep bell starts ringing… in whose presence you feel a blessing. Then only is it possible for you to make love to the other person. To make love is possible only if the meeting — the inner meeting — has happened. Otherwise it is simply impossible to think, even to imagine that you are making love to a person you don’t love.

 

-Osho, "The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 2, #10, Q3“

 

 

 

If you have really experienced the inner light, sex will disappear. Love will happen to you, but sex will disappear; sexuality will disappear. Love, a very loving personality, will take its place. There will be no desire for sex. If the desire for sex remains, you have not experienced the inner light. Then the inner light is just a projection of the mind.

 

-Osho, "The New Alchemy: To Turn You On, #6“

 

 

 

A split personality can never become non-greedy. It can try, but it can never become. A split personality can never go beyond anger. It can try, but it can never go beyond. A split personality can never go beyond sex. It can fight. So many monks in the monasteries are doing it. They don’t go beyond sex; at the most their sexuality becomes perverted, their love becomes poisoned.

 

-Osho, "Nirvana: The Last Nightmare, #1“

 

 

 

Remember, you can make love to a woman without any love in your heart -- then it is pure sexuality, animality; it is prostitution. You can make love to a woman with no idea of sex, then love is just a pure communication of two energies, a sharing, a dance, a celebration. No idea of sex in the mind and you can make love to a woman, and the woman can make love to you not thinking of sex at all. The whole point is where your mind is. If you are thinking of sex, if your mind is obsessed with sex, you simply want to use the woman, the woman simply wants to use you, it is ugly. It has no aesthetics in it, no poetry in it. There is nothing of the beyond in it -- it is very muddy.

 

But the same act.... Remember, the act will be the same: when two lovers make love and when a man goes to a prostitute biologically the act is the same, but spiritually there is a tremendous difference. The man who goes to the prostitute is thinking only of sex, and the lover when he makes love to the woman has no idea of sex. It is simply a communion, coming closer and closer. Then sex happens only as a gesture of communion. It is virgin.

 

That's my idea of virginity. The lover always remains virgin; the lover cannot lose his virginity. And Jesus, a man like Jesus, can only come out of great love. But please try to understand the language of the ancients. It is very simple to misunderstand, because centuries have passed, words have changed their meanings. And we have forgotten that the old days were not days of scientific language but of poetic language.

 

-Osho, "Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2, #5“