Have you ever observed how time changes as you change? If you are miserable, time becomes long, lengthy. If you are joyous, time becomes small. But the clock will show the same time. If it is one hour then the clock will show that one hour has passed -- whether you are miserable or blissful, the clock is not affected. The clock goes on moving; it is a mechanical device. It simply reports chronological time, it does not report your inner experiences of time.
If you are sitting with a friend after many years, time passes so fast. If you are lonely, miserable, anxious, restless, time seems to pass with such slowness. This is your experience, that time becomes longer or shorter according to you, according to your mind.
You must have known some moments when time had totally stopped. Ordinarily, biological man, the sleepy man, only knows such moments through lovemaking -- because it is only in lovemaking that he loses his mind, it is only in lovemaking that he gets lost. But that peak, the orgasmic peak, in which he loses all mind, and becomes just a vibration, becomes just an energy, a liquid energy -- no thought, no past, no future, no desire -- happens only for moments. It is only through love and the orgasmic experience that you become aware that there is a possibility of time stopping totally.
Hence I say: sexual orgasm is the lowest but the fundamental experience of meditation -- lowest and fundamental. It is through sexual orgasm that man became aware of the infinite possibility of stopping time completely, of getting out of time. If you can get out of time for one moment, that means one can get out of time forever, too. Then ways and means have to be found. That's how Tantra, Yoga, Zen, Tao, Sufism, all kinds of ways and means, have been found. Once man became aware that the possibility exists that there is a window through which he can escape, even though it happens only once in a while....
Many times people ask me why women have not become great masters like Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Bodhidharma, Jesus -- why? One of the fundamental reasons is that man has denied women the experience of orgasm. You will be surprised by my answer. You will not have imagined that that would be the root cause why women could not rise as high as a Buddha, as a Bodhidharma.
What went wrong? One thing: man has not allowed women to have the experience of orgasm. And it became possible because there is a little difference between a man's orgasm and a woman's orgasm. Man comes to his orgasmic peak very quickly, so he can have his orgasm easily, quickly. The woman comes to the orgasmic plane slowly; her pace is different. Unless a man loves the woman tremendously and helps her to come to the orgasmic state and moves slowly with her.... If he cares about her, is not just using the woman as a means to attain his own orgasm but is also careful and attentive and loving enough that she should also have her orgasm, then he moves slowly.
That's what Tantra discovered centuries ago: that man has to move very slowly. Man's orgasm is local, genital, and the woman's orgasm is more total. Her whole body is involved in it, hence it takes time. Man's orgasm is so local that it does not take much time. Unless a man loves the woman, caresses her body, helps her whole body to rise to the peak.... It is a subtle art to come to the orgasmic state together.
When man and woman both come to the orgasmic state together, simultaneously, it is a great experience of ecstasy -- very rich. Man coming alone to orgasm is one thing: it misses much, it is not so rich, it is not multidimensional. It is more or less masturbatory -- the woman has been used only as a means for masturbation -- it is not true orgasm, and the woman remains behind. And man has been doing that for centuries, so many women have completely forgotten that there is any possibility of orgasm for them.
It is only now with the women's liberation movement that women are becoming aware that in the past they have been missing something very valuable in their lives. In the East they are not yet aware of it. It is very rare in the East to find an orgasmic woman, one who knows what orgasm is. Even in the West only a very small percentage of women is becoming capable of orgasm.
This has been the greatest oppression, the greatest exploitation of women, because if women are deprived of orgasm they are deprived of one of the most fundamental experiences of meditation. The only window towards God remains closed. They never become aware that there is a moment when time disappears, that there is a moment when "I am no more a body, no more a mind, but a pure consciousness -- absolutely thoughtless, desireless, dreamless and utterly blissful."
This is the lowest experience, remember; one has not to stop there. This is the first step of a long journey, only then do you arrive at the temple. But it is a necessary step, it is very fundamental.
So once in a while you may have become aware that time stops, but time stops only when you are blissful. Time stops only when you are absolutely without mind -- conscious, yet mind is not there -- because you are not 'minding', you are not thinking... a simple existence.
It can happen in music, it can happen while watching a sunset, it can happen while you are painting. But these experiences are far more rare, whereas sex is available to each and everybody: it is a biological gift of nature. To be a musician of such caliber that you can lose yourself as you lose yourself in a woman or a man is a rare phenomenon; it happens only once in a while. To be a painter, a sculptor, a dancer, a poet -- this needs great talents, and one may not have them -- but the same thing happens.
That's why it is possible for a great painter to go beyond sex very easily: because he has another window to experience the orgasm, to experience the timeless moment, to experience God. It is easier for a poet or a dancer to go beyond sex than it is for others, because they have an alternative through which they can experience the same thing -- and maybe with a greater depth.
But whatsoever the cause, if you have ever experienced a moment when time stops, that is the moment which has to be understood because that is the nature of meditation. That is what brings you home finally, ultimately. Before that, all kinds of questions will arise; they are all meaningless. Masters answer them because of compassion, otherwise they are all foolish.
-Osho, “The White Lotus, #5”
While you make love to a man, you will feel guilty, because your mother has told you that this is wrong, this is the greatest sin. When you start making love to a man, something in you feels it is not right -- -the mother is standing there, the father is standing there, and it looks so embarrassing with the parents standing... and you are making love to a man?! What are you doing? Stop it! You may not stop, but you will not go totally into it -- which is far worse than stopping. It is better to stop! You cannot stop either, because then your whole nature feels discontented. And you cannot go totally in it because your mind says this is wrong. So you go half-heartedly, half way, and you exist in a limbo. You never go to the totality of it -- SO YOU NEVER FEEL SATISFIED. Out of it you only gather more frustration; you again find you have failed once more, that's all. It has not happened this time again.
And you start wondering whether this orgasm is just an invention, whether some masochistic people have invented it, or some sadistic people have invented it, just to make people feel tortured -- because it is not happening to me!
You will be surprised: this is the first century after at least five thousand years that a few women are feeling orgasm. For five thousand years, women have NOT felt orgasm. That too is happening only in the Western hemisphere. I have not come across a single Indian woman who feels orgasm -- she has not even heard about the word. In Indian languages we don't have any word for orgasm -- because the thing has not existed so the word was never needed. Even in the West, only ten, twelve percent of women are feeling orgasm. This is ugly!
And what to say about men? Do you think men feel orgasm? Ejaculation is not orgasm. Orgasm is a very very different phenomenon. So man can deceive himself easily because he can feel ejaculation, so he thinks he has orgasm -- that is not so. Ejaculation is a very local phenomenon, just the triggering of a physical mechanism -- a release, a relief, nothing more.
Orgasm is ecstasy. Orgasm is getting lost into timelessness. Orgasm is when your whole body vibrates with some unknown energy that you have never come across. Orgasm is when you are very close to God.
The word orgasm comes from ORGIA -- it was a religious ceremony, a pagan ceremony, when people became ecstatic, so ecstatic, that their whole body was full of divine energy, and they were bursting with energy, and they were lost in that energy -- that was called ORGIA. It was a religious pagan ceremony; it was something like Tantra. It was Dionysian. The word 'orgasm' comes from that ceremony.
Men also rarely feel it. When your whole body throbs, not only your sexual organ but your whole body throbs, from toe to head you become a sexual orgasm, you become a sexual organ.... That is the symbol of Shiva; you must have seen in India the Shiva-linga. You may sometimes be wondering, "Where are the eyes and where is the nose and where is the mouth and where are the legs? and what kind of image is this?"
This is the symbol of orgasm: when the whole body turns into a sexual organ. From eyes, mouth, body, mind -- all disappear into sexuality, into sensuality, into a kind of immense sensitivity. That is the meaning of Shiva-linga.
Orgasm has become impossible because you cannot go totally with the flow. And with orgasm becoming impossible, a thousand and one diseases have become prevalent in man. Wilhelm Reich is right that if we can bring orgasm back to humanity, almost ninety percent of mental diseases will IMMEDIATELY disappear -- like dewdrops in the morning when the sun comes.
Ninety percent of mental diseases exist because man has forgotten how to be rejuvenated with God, how to fall into divine energy, and come back again resurrected. Those blocked energies are creating problems. But now... first the priest created the guilt, now the psychoanalyst is against Wilhelm Reich -- because, the psychoanalyst, where will he go if ninety percent of mental diseases disappear? If Reich is right, then what about the Freudians and the Adlerians and the Jungians and others -- what will happen to them? Reich was condemned as mad, was forced into imprisonment -- and he was one of the greatest geniuses of this age, who had a real insight. But this is what we always do: we crucify! He died condemned as a madman in a prison.
-Osho, “Walk Without Feet, Fly Without Wings and Think Without Mind, #5, Q3”
All the religions have been created by men; there is not a single religion which has been created by women. And why men created all these religions? And all these religions have been repressive -- repressive particularly of sex. Few things have to be understood: man is afraid deep down of sex, because as far as sex is concerned he is far weaker than the woman. The woman is capable of having multiple orgasms, man is not capable of that. He is immensely afraid of the woman.
Hence all the human societies, particularly the so-called civilized societies, have destroyed the very possibility of women knowing -- even knowing -- that they are orgasmic. It is only just within these twenty, thirty years that it has been discovered that the woman has not only the orgasmic capacity, she has the capacity of multiple orgasms. But man must have known from the very beginning that no single man can satisfy a woman if she has the multiple-orgasmic capacity. Man can have only one orgasm; with one orgasm he is finished. And the woman is still on the way; may not even have started!
The second trouble is: she is slow, and she is slow for a basic reason. Her sexuality is not local, her sexuality is total. Her whole body has a sexual quality. Man's sexuality is local, it is genital. Woman's sexuality is not local, it is not focused; it is diffused, it is all over her body. So unless she can go in a sexual dance while making love she will not be able to have orgasm.
But if she goes in a sexual dance while making love, shrieks, screams, sings, shouts, says "Alleluia!" the man will become so much afraid... because whatsoever she will be saying will be gibberish, it will not make any sense. It will be sensuous but not sensible! She will be speaking a divine language; it will be just coming. Even she will be surprised what is coming up. What she is saying and why, for what? It is nothing to do with expressing any particular thing; she is just so excited, ecstatic. Her whole being is in a dance; she is in a temporary state of madness, and this can freak out the man -- the poor fellow may even forget about his one orgasm! He may become concerned about the neighbors and the police and the fire brigade and whatnot!
So from the very beginning man has been repressive -- repress the woman, make her feel guilty. Nice ladies don't even move! They have to lie down almost dead, cold, unmoving, only then they are ladies. What a strange definition of ladies -- the true definition should be "a good lay"! But what kind of good lay is this lady? She is just dead!
-Osho, “The Wild Geese and the Water, #3, Q3”