Osho on Sex

 

 

If I Say Anything About Sex, Immediately They Jump Upon It

 

Sex is raw energy. It has to be transformed, and through transformation there is transcendence. Rather than transforming it, religions have been repressing it. And if you repress it the natural outcome is a perverted human being. He becomes obsessed with sex.

 

The people who call me ‘sex guru’ are obsessed with sex. I have not talked about sex more than I have talked about meditation, love, God, prayer, but nobody seems to be interested in God, love, meditation, prayer. If I say anything about sex, immediately they jump upon it.

 

Out of my three hundred books only one book concerns sex, and that, too, not in its totality. The name of the book is From Sex to Superconsciousness. Just the beginning of it is concerned with sex; as you go deeper in understanding it moves towards superconsciousness, towards samadhi. Now that is the book which has reached to millions of people. It is a strange phenomenon: my other books have not reached to so many people. There is not a single Hindu, Jaina saint, mahatma in India who has not read it. It has been discussed criticized, analyzed, commented upon in every possible way. Many books have been written against it – as if that is the only book I have written!

 

Why so much emphasis? People are obsessed particularly the religious people are obsessed. This label of ‘sex guru’ comes from religious people.

 

-Osho, "Zen: The Special Transmission, Talk #4"

 

 

 

 

Create Meditation Out of Sex

 

The more you go into meditation through sex, the less effect sex will have. Meditation will grow from it, and out of the growing meditation a new door will open and sex will wither away. It will not be a sublimation. It will be just like dry leaves falling from a tree. The tree never even knows the leaves are falling. In the same way, you will never even know that the mechanical urge for sex is going.

 

Create meditation out of sex; make sex an object of meditation. Treat it as a temple and you will transcend it and be transformed. Then sex will not be there, but there will not be any suppression, any sublimation. Sex will just become irrelevant, meaningless. You have grown beyond it. It makes no sense to you now.

 

It is just like a child growing up. Now toys are meaningless. He has not sublimated anything; he has not suppressed anything. He has just grown up; he has become mature. Toys are meaningless now. They are childish and now the child is no longer a child.

 

In the same way, the more you meditate, the less sex will have an appeal to you. And by and by, spontaneously, without a conscious effort to sublimate sex, energy will have a new source to flow to. The same energy that has flowed through sex will now flow through meditation. And when it flows through meditation, the divine door is being opened.

 

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

 

 

 

 

Steps to the Divine

 

Osho,

Please describe to us the spiritual significance of sex energy. How can we sublimate and spiritualize sex? Is it possible to have sex, to make love, as a meditation, as a jumping board towards higher levels of consciousness? [....]

 

You have used the words `sex' and `love'. Ordinarily we use both words as if they have an inner association. They have not. Love comes only when sex has gone. Before that, love is just a lure, a foreplay, and nothing else. It is just preparing the ground for the sex act. It is nothing but an introduction to sex, a preface. So the more sex there is between two persons, the less love there will be because then the preface is not needed. [....]

 

When sex becomes a meditation it flowers into love, and this flowering is a movement towards the divine. That is why love is divine. Sex is physical; love is spiritual. And if the flower of love is there, prayer will come; it will follow. Now you are not far from the divine. You are near home.

 

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"

 

 

 

 

If You Can Manage to Become Meditative in Your Sex Life....

 

Holding the hand of your woman or your man, there is no need to talk. People are continuously talking -- yakkety-yakkety-yakkety. And the reason why they are talking is that they are afraid to be silent, they are afraid to see the truth, they are afraid to see their utter emptiness, they are afraid to expose themselves, they are afraid to look deep into the other. Continuous talking keeps them on the surface, occupied, engaged.

 

Holding the hand of your woman or man, why not sit silently? Why not close your eyes and feel? Feel the presence of the other, enter into the presence of the other, let the other's presence enter into you; vibrate together, sway together; if suddenly a great energy possesses you, dance together -- and you will reach to such orgasmic peaks of joy as you have never known before. Those orgasmic peaks have nothing to do with sex, in fact they have much to do with silence.

 

And if you can also manage to become meditative in your sex life, if you can be silent while making love, in a kind of dance, you will be surprised. You have a built-in process to take you to the farthest shore.

 

-Osho, "The Book of Wisdom, Talk #7, Q1"

 

 

 

 

Love Is Dangerous, Sex Is Not Dangerous

 

Nobody can be in possession of love. Love possesses you, you cannot possess it. Love controls you, you cannot control it. Love means you are no longer there, something else has come. That's why love is so rejuvenating.

 

Even if an old man falls in love, suddenly, you will see that his face has become younger. His eyes are no more old; his body may be old, but his total being suddenly becomes young. Why does it happen? -- for this very reason: you can allow a let-go; you move to the original source of energy where rebirth is possible. You only touch the deathless core when you are ready to die. That is the paradox -- you touch the deepest core when you are ready to die. If you cling to the surface and you are afraid, afraid to let go, then you remain on the surface; and the surface is the body.

 

People who are afraid of love are not afraid of sex. Love is dangerous, sex is not dangerous -- it can be manipulated. There are now many manuals on how to do it. You can manipulate it -- sex can become a technique. Love can never become a technique. In sex, you try to remain in control; then even sex will not help to reach the Ultimate. It will go to a certain point and you will drop back because somewhere it also needs a let-go.

 

That is why orgasm is becoming more and more difficult. Ejaculation is not orgasm, to give birth to children is not orgasm. Orgasm is the involvement of the total body: mind, body, soul, all together you vibrate, your whole being vibrates from the toes to the head. You are no longer in control; existence has taken possession of you and you don't know who you are. It is like a madness, it is like a sleep, it is like meditation, it is like death.

 

So even in sex, you let go up to a point, but you don't allow totality, because if you allowed totality then the ego could not exist. And this is the problem -- you are afraid of death because you are not capable of living totally.

 

-Osho, "Returning to the Source, Talk #10"

 

 

 

 

Love Can Give a New Soul to Sex

 

Sex is a part of love, of a greater whole. Love gives it the beauty, otherwise it is one of the most ugliest actions. That's why people move into sex in darkness: even they don't like themselves to see the act being performed in the night. You see all animals make love in the day, except man. No animal bothers in the night -- night is for rest. All animals love in the day; only man loves in the night. A certain fear that the act of love is a little ugly... And no woman ever makes love with open eyes because they have a more aesthetic sense than man. They always love with closed eyes so nothing is seen. Women are not pornographic, only man is.

 

That's why so many nude pictures, paintings, of women exist: only man is interested in to see the body. Woman are not interested; they have a more aesthetic sense because body is of the animal. Unless it becomes of the divine, there is nothing to see in it. Love can give a new soul to sex. Then the sex is transfigured -- it becomes beautiful; it is no more sex -- it has something of the beyond in it. It has become a bridge. You can love a person because the person satisfies your sex. This is not love, just a bargain. You can make sex with a person because you love; then sex follows just like a shadow, part of love. Then it is beautiful; then it is no more of the animal world. Then something of the beyond has already entered, and if you go on loving a person deeply, by and by sex disappears. Intimacy becomes so fulfilling, then there is no need for sex; love is enough unto itself. When that moment comes then there is the possibility of prayer dawning upon you.

 

When two lovers are in such a deep love that love suffices and sex has simply dropped -- not that it has been dropped, not that it has been suppressed, no; it has simply disappeared from your consciousness, not leaving even a scar behind -- then two lovers are in such total unity... Because sex divides. The very word "sex comes from a root which means division. Love unites, sex divides. Sex is the root cause of division.

 

When you make sex to a person, woman or man, you think it unites you. For a moment it gives you the illusion of unity, and then a vast division suddenly comes in. That's why after every sex act, a frustration, a depression sets in. One feels that one is so far away from the beloved. Sex divides, and when love goes deeper and deeper and unites more and more, there is no need for sex. Your inner energies can meet without sex, and you live in such a unity.

 

You can see two lovers when their sex disappears: you can see the glow that comes to two lovers when sex disappears: they exist as two bodies in one soul. The soul surrounds them; it becomes a glow all around their bodies. But it rarely happens.

 

People end with sex. At the most, with living together they start being affectionate towards each other -- at the most. But love is not simple affection; it is a unity of souls -- two energies meeting and becoming whole. When this happens, only then is prayer possible. Then both lovers in their unity feel so fulfilled, so perfect, that a gratitude arises; they start humming prayer.

 

-Osho, "Yoga: The Mystery Beyond Mind, Talk #8, Q2"

 

 

 

 

False Phenomena Around Death and Sex

 

Question 1

What is the relationship between sex and death?

 

 

I have said that man is afraid of both. That's why they are taboos. No one talks about sex and no one talks about death.

 

We remain silent about these two things. We have remained silent for centuries and centuries. They are taboo subjects, they should not even be mentioned. The moment they are mentioned, something starts trembling within us.

 

It seems that a deep repression is there. That's why we have created substitute words. In the western world they do not say, "We are having sex." They say, "We are making love." It's a substitute word. And false, because love is a totally different dimension. Having sex is having sex; it is not making love. Love may include sex, but it has a different quality altogether.

 

We never talk about death directly. If someone dies, we use substitute words. We say he has gone to meet his Father, or he has gone to heaven. Death is never faced directly.

 

We have created many false phenomena around death and sex. If two persons are going to be married, sex is not even mentioned. And they are going to be married for sex! We have created a great illusion around marriage, but the bare, naked fact is sex. We have created a ritual, a great ritual of marriage, just to hide the fact. Why?

 

Why is there a taboo about these two things only? The two are deeply related. The reason for their relationship is this:

 

First, you are born out of sex; birth is sex. And birth and death are two poles of one thing. In your very birth, death is hidden. That's why man became aware of the deep relationship between sex and death. Death cannot happen without sex just like birth cannot happen without sex.

 

-Osho, "The New Alchemy: To Turn You On, Talk #7, Q1"

 

 

 

 

No Attitude About Sex Is Needed

 

If you take sex naturally — with no philosophy around it, with no philosophy for or against -- if you take sex as you take your hands, your eyes; if it is totally accepted as a natural thing, then tantra will have an appeal. And only then can tantra be useful for many.

 

But the days of tantra are coming. Sooner or later tantra will explode for the first time in the masses, because for the first time the time is ripe -- ripe to take sex naturally. It is possible that the explosion may come from the West, because Freud, Jung, Reich, they have prepared the background. They did not know anything about tantra, but they have made the basic ground for tantra to evolve. Western psychology has come to a conclusion that the basic human disease is somewhere around sex, the basic insanity of man is sex-oriented.

 

So unless this sex orientation is dissolved, man cannot be natural, normal. Man has gone wrong only because of his attitudes about sex. No attitude is needed. Only then are you natural. What attitude have you about your eyes? Are they evil or are they divine? Are you for your eyes or against them? There is no attitude! That is why your eyes are normal.

 

-Osho, "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1, #2, Q1"

 

 

 

 

We Are Afraid of Sex

 

Unless humanity becomes non-suppressive toward sex, man cannot breathe really. If the breath goes deep down to the abdomen, it gives energy to the sex center. It touches the sex center; it massages the sex center from within. The sex center becomes more active, more alive. Civilization is afraid of sex. We do not allow our children to touch their sex centers, their sex organs. We say, "Stop! Don't touch!"

 

Look at a child when he first touches his sex center, and then say "Stop!" and then observe his breathing. When you say "Stop! Don't touch your sex center!" the breath will become shallow immediately – because it is not only his hand which is touching the sex center, deep down the breath is touching it. And if the breath goes on touching it, it is difficult to stop the hand. If the hand stops, then basically it is necessary, required, that the breath should not touch, should not go deep. It must remain shallow.

 

We are afraid of sex. The lower part of the body is not only lower physically, it has become lower as a value. It is condemned as "lower." So do not go deep, just remain shallow. It is unfortunate that we can only breathe downwards. If some preachers were allowed, they would change the whole mechanism. They would only allow you to breathe upward into the head. Then you would absolutely not feel sex.

 

If we are to create a sexless humanity, then we will have to change the breathing system. The breath must go into the head, to the sahasrar – the seventh center in the head – then come back to the mouth. This should be the passage: from the mouth to the sahasrar. It must not go deep down because down is dangerous. The deeper you go, the nearer you reach to the deeper layers of biology. You reach to the center, and that center is just near the sex center – just near. It has to be, because sex is life.

 

-Osho, "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1, Talk #3"

 

 

 

 

Move into Sex and Remain Alert

 

When you follow tantra, you move through sex. That is tantra's path; you allow nature a total surrender. It is a let-go, you don't fight, it is not a path of a warrior. You don't struggle; you surrender wherever nature leads. Nature leads into sex you surrender to sex. You completely move into it with no guilt, with no concept of sin.

 

Tantra has no concept of sin, no guilt. Move into sex. Just remain alert, watching what is happening. Be alert, mindful what is going on. But don't try to control, don't try to contain yourself; allow the flow. Move into the woman; let the woman move into you. Let them become a circle and you remain a watcher. Through this watching and let-go, tantra achieves a transcendence. Sex disappears. This is one way to go beyond nature because going beyond sex is going beyond nature.

 

Whole nature is sexual. Flowers are there because they are sexual. All beauty exists because of some sexual phenomenon. A continuous game is on. Trees are attracting others, birds are calling others. Everywhere a sexual game is on. Nature is sex, and to achieve to the supersex is to go beyond sex. But tantra says use sex as a step. Don't fight with it: go beyond it, using it. Move through it, pass through it, and attain to the transcendence through experience. A watchful experience becomes transcendence.

 

-Osho, "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2, #8, Q5"

 

 

 

 

In Deep Sex Two Things Disappear: Ego and Time

 

You will never transcend sex. You may become perverted, but you cannot transcend sex. Transcendence is only when you have gone into it totally and seen into it and seen the momentariness of it -- and seen that it is not really sex that was your longing but something else. Sex was just an excuse to experience something else. When you have experienced sex totally, you will become aware of THAT something else.

 

What is that? In the total orgasmic joy of sex, time disappears, ego disappears -- these two things disappear. That is the greatest longing in you. Once you have known that in deep sex two things disappear -- ego and time.... You are not aware of time, you move into eternity; and you are not aware of separation, the ego is not functioning at all -- that is the joy. Once understood that this is the root cause of joy, you are free of sex. Because now the whole thing is that you can drop ego and time without going into sex. And sex can make it happen only for a moment, then darkness settles again. That light comes only for a moment.

 

But through meditation, that light becomes a reality in you. You start living out of time and you start living out of ego. What you attain in a sex orgasm for a single moment, Buddha lives in it twenty-four hours a day. That's why he does not need sex. That is transcendence.

 

Sona, transcendence is possible only when you have known the whole secret of sex. The secret is it is a biological, natural device to make you aware of meditation. It is through sexual orgasm that meditation was discovered. The first person who discovered meditation is bound to have discovered it through sex; there is no other way -- because sex is a natural phenomenon. Meditation is a discovery, it is not a natural phenomenon. It is going beyond nature, it is a transcendence.

 

-Osho, "Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2, #3, Q3"

 

 

 

 

Sex Is Your Life, Ego Is just Your Mind

 

Sex is transcended not by your effort. It happens if you have lived it totally. So my suggestion is, drop all anti-attitudes, anti-life attitudes and accept the facticity: sex is, so who are you to drop it? And who is trying to drop it? -- it is just the ego. Remember, sex creates the greatest problem for the ego.

 

So there are two types of people: very egoistic people are always against sex; humble people are never against sex. But who listens to humble people? In fact, humble people don't go preaching, only egoists. Why is there a conflict between sex and ego? -- because sex is something in your life where you cannot be egoistic, where the other becomes more important than you. Your woman, your man, becomes more important than you. In every other case, you remain the most important. In a love relationship the other becomes very, very important, tremendously important. You become a satellite and the other becomes the nucleus; and the same is happening for the other: you become the nucleus and he becomes a satellite. It is a reciprocal surrender. Both are surrendering to the God of love, and both become humble.

 

Sex is the only energy that gives you hints that there is something which you cannot control. Money you can control, politics you can control, the market you can control, knowledge you can control, science you can control, morality you can control. Somewhere, sex brings in a totally different world: you cannot control it. And the ego is the great controller. It is happy if it can control; it is unhappy if it cannot control. So there starts a conflict between ego and sex. Remember, it is a losing battle. The ego cannot win it because ego is just superficial. Sex is very deep-rooted. Sex is your life; ego is just your mind, your head. Sex has roots all over you; ego has roots only in your ideas -- very superficial, just in the head.

 

So who is trying to transcend sex? -- the head is trying to transcend sex. If you are too much in the head then you want to transcend sex, because sex brings you down to the guts. It does not allow you to remain hanging in the head. Everything else you can manage from there; sex you cannot manage from there. You cannot make love with your heads. You have to come down, you have to descend from your heights, you have to come closer to earth. Sex is humiliating to the ego, so egoist people are against, always against sex. They go on finding ways and means to transcend it. They can never transcend it. They can, at the most, become perverted. Their whole effort from the very beginning is doomed to failure.

 

-Osho, "The Beloved, Vol 1, #4, Q1"

 

 

 

 

Sex Is Potentiality

 

When love expresses through you it first expresses as the body. It becomes sex. If it expresses through the mind, which is higher, deeper, subtler, then it is called love. If it expresses through the spirit, it becomes prayer. [....]

 

When love -- the same energy -- expresses through body, it becomes sex. If everything goes well and sex is natural and flowing it is a beautiful experience because you can have a glimpse of the second through it. If sex goes really very deep, so that you forget yourself completely in it, you can even have a glimpse of the third through it. And if sex becomes a total orgasmic experience, there are rare moments when you can even have a glimpse of the fourth, the TURIYA, the beyond, through it.

 

But if sex fails, then many perversions happen to the mind. These perversions are expressed in hatred. Hatred is a failure of sex, a failure of love energy. Violence, lust for money, the continuous conflicting attitudes of egos: war, politics -- these are all sex perversions.

 

A man whose sex is not perverted cannot become a politician. It is impossible. All politicians as such need deep sexual therapy, otherwise their whole energy will be. moving to gain more and more power. When sex is natural, you feel power, you are not seeking it. Sex is potentiality, power. You feel it showering on you, you don't seek and search for it. But when you miss it there, then a great urge arises to seek power: politics is born. Then wars, continuous violence, are born; hatred, anger, and a thousand and one types of perversions.

 

People become attached too much to things when sex fails, because then they cannot be attached to persons. Because to be related to a person you have to flow, you have to be open.

 

With things there is no need to flow or to be open. Things can be possessed, persons cannot be possessed. Things are dead, persons are not dead. Persons are freedom in essence: you can love them, you can delight in them, but you cannot possess them.

 

People whose natural function of sex has failed become much too possessive about money, things of the world.

 

-Osho, "Talking Tao, Talk #1"

 

 

 

 

The More Sexual a Person Is, the More Intelligent

 

Sex is most foundational. Without sex there is no life. Life exists because of sex and life disappears with sex. That is why Buddha and Mahavir say that unless you go beyond sex you will be born again and again. You cannot go beyond life, because with the sexual desire inside you will be born again. So sex is not only giving birth to someone else; ultimately, it is giving birth to yourself also. It works in a double way. You reproduce someone through sex, but that is not so important -- because of your sexual desire, you are reborn; you reproduce yourself again and again. Adam became aware of his sex; that was the first awareness. But this sex is only a beginning. Then everything else will follow.

 

Really, psychologists say that every curiosity is sexual in a way. So if a person is born impotent, he will not-be curious about anything -- not even about Truth, because curiosity inside is basically sexual. To discover something hidden, to know something which is not known, to know the unknown, is sexual. Children will play with each other to find out the hidden parts of the body. That is the beginning of curiosity and the beginning of all science -- to find out that which is hidden, that which is not known.

 

Really, it happens that the more sexual a person, the more inventive he can be; the more sexual a person, the more intelligent. With less sex energy, less intelligence exists and with more energy, more intelligence -- because sex is a deep fact to uncover: not only in the body, not only in the body of the opposite sex, but in everything that is hidden.

 

So if a society is very sex-condemning, it can never be scientific, because then it condemns curiosity. The East could not be scientific because of so much antagonism toward sex. And the West also could not have become scientific if Christianity had retained its hold. It was only when the Vatican disappeared, when Rome was not significant at all, only within these three hundred years when the palace of Christianity came down and disappeared, that the West could be scientific. The release of sex energy also became a release into research.

 

A sexually free society can be scientific, and a sexually prohibited society will be non-scientific. With sex everything begins to be alive. If your child begins to behave rebelliously when he attains maturity, sexual maturity, forget it. It is but natural. With a new energy coming into his veins, with a new life running, he is bound to be rebellious. That rebellion is just a part. He is also bound to be an inventor. He will invent new things, new ways, new styles, new manners of life, a new society. He can dream new dreams, he will think about a new utopia. If you condemn sex, then there is no rebellion of youth. All over the world, the rebellion of youth is a part of sexual freedom.

 

In the old culture there was no rebellion because sex was so much condemned, the energy was too much suppressed. With that energy suppressed, every rebellion is suppressed. If you give freedom to sex energy, every rebellion will be there, every type of rebellion will be there.

 

Knowledge in itself has a sexual dimension, so it is right in a way to say that Adam became aware of sex, the dimension of sex. But with that dimension of sex he became aware of many other things also. This whole extension of knowledge, this explosion of knowledge, this probing into the unknown, this going to the moon and to other planets, is a sexual thirst. And it will go further and further into knowledge, because now the energy is released, and now the energy will take new shapes, new adventures.

 

-Osho, "The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol. 2, Talk #2, Q1"

 

 

 

 

Sex Is the Source

 

Sex can give you the answer to what the reality of life is because sex is the most alive thing in you. Mind is the most dead thing in you and sex is the most alive thing in you. That is why mind is always against sex, and mind is always for suppressing it. They are enemies. Mind is a dead thing and sex is the life force; they go on fighting. And whenever you move into sex, the mind feels frustrated and the mind says, "This is wrong. Do not move into it again!"

 

The mind becomes the moralizer, the mind becomes the puritan, the mind becomes the priest. The mind goes on condemning. All that is alive the mind goes on condemning and all that is dead the mind goes on worshipping. And sex is the most alive thing in you because life comes through it: you are born through it, you can give birth through it. Wherever there is life, aliveness, sex is the source. Not only in man: these trees are also sexual. Flowers are nothing but maturing seeds; they are sexual. The animals are sexual.

 

-Osho, "The Supreme Doctrine, Talk #14"

 

 

 

 

They Do Not Know Any Other Type of Man

 

Psychologists say that love is nothing but a foreplay to sex. They are right -- because they have no other specimen to study. They study you and then they come to conclude that love is nothing but a foreplay -- just creating a situation in which sex can happen, nothing else. So when sex has happened, love disappears. It is just like when you feel hungry you gravitate toward food and look at food with enchanted eyes. But when your hunger is satiated, you look away from the food. All the enchantment is lost.

 

So when you love your wife or your husband, the love is just an etiquette to enter into sex -- because it will be too rude to start.... So it just plays like a lubricating agent. And when sex is satisfied, the husband moves to his own side of the bed and goes to sleep. He is finished; all the enchantment is gone. It will come again only when he feels a type of hunger. Psychologists say that love is nothing but a foreplay -- just a mannerism. And they are right because they do not know any other type of man.

 

-Osho, "The Supreme Doctrine, Talk #5, Q3"