Question 2
How often should one indulge in sex in order to help and not to hinder the meditation process?"
The question arises because we go on misunderstanding. Your sex act and the tantric sex act are basically different. Your sex act is to relieve; it is just like sneezing out a good sneeze. The energy is thrown out and you are unburdened. It is destructive, it is not creative. It is good -- therapeutic. It helps you to be relaxed, but nothing more.
The tantric sex act is basically, diametrically opposite and different. It is not to relieve, it is not to throw energy out. It is to remain in the act without ejaculation, without throwing energy out; to remain in the act merged -- just at the beginning part of the act, not the end part. This changes the quality; the complete quality is different then.
Try to understand two things. There are two types of climaxes, two types of orgasm. One type of orgasm is known. You reach to a peak of excitement, then you cannot go further: the end has come. The excitement reaches to a point where it becomes non-voluntary. The energy jumps into you and goes out. You are relieved of it, unburdened. The load is thrown; you can relax and sleep.
You are using it like a tranquilizer. It is a natural tranquilizer: a good sleep will follow -- if your mind is not burdened by religion. Otherwise even the tranquilizer is destroyed. If your mind is not burdened by religion, only then can sex be a tranquilizing thing. If you feel guilt, even your sleep will be disturbed. You will feel depression, you will start condemning yourself and you will begin to take oaths that now you won't indulge anymore. Then your sleep will become a nightmare afterwards. If you are a natural being not too much burdened by religion and morality, only then can sex be used as a tranquilizer.
This is one type of orgasm -- coming to the peak of excitement. Tantra is centered on another type of orgasm. If we call the first kind a peak orgasm, you can call the tantric orgasm a valley orgasm. In it you are not coming to the peak of excitement, but to the very deepest valley of relaxation.
Excitement has to be used for both in the beginning. That is why I say that in the beginning both are the same, but the ends are totally different.
Excitement has to be used for both: either you are going toward the peak of excitement or to the valley of relaxation. For the first, excitement has to be intense -- more and more intense. You have to grow in it; you have to help it to grow towards the peak. In the second, excitement is just a beginning. And once the man has entered, both lover and beloved can relax. No movement is needed. They can relax in a loving embrace. When the man feels or the woman feels that the erection is going to be lost, only then is a little movement and excitement required. But then again relax. You can prolong this deep embrace for hours with no ejaculation, and then both can fall into deep sleep together. This -- THIS -- is a valley orgasm. Both are relaxed, and they meet as two relaxed beings.
In the ordinary sexual orgasm you meet as two excited beings -- tense, full of excitement, trying to unburden yourselves. The ordinary sexual orgasm looks like madness; the tantric orgasm is a deep, relaxing meditation. Then there is no question of how often one should indulge. You can indulge as much as you like because no energy is lost. Rather, energy is gained.
You may not be aware of it, but this is a fact of biology, of bio-energy, that man and woman are opposite forces. Negative-positive, yin-yang, or whatsoever you call them, they are challenging to each other. And when they both meet in a deep relaxation, they revitalize each other. They both revitalize each other, they both become generators, they both feel livelier, they both become radiant with new energy, and nothing is lost. Just by meeting with the opposite pole energy is renewed.
The tantric love act can be done as much as you like. The ordinary sex act cannot be done as much as you like because you are losing energy in it, and your body will have to wait to regain it. And when you regain it, you will only lose it again. This looks absurd. The whole life is spent in gaining and losing, regaining and losing: it is just like an obsession.
The second thing to be remembered: you may or may not have observed that when you look at animals you can never see them enjoying sex. In intercourse, they are not enjoying themselves. Look at baboons, monkeys, dogs or any kind of animals. In their sex act you cannot see that they are feeling blissful or enjoying it -- you cannot! It seems to be just a mechanical act, a natural force pushing them towards it. If you have seen monkeys in intercourse, after the intercourse they will separate. Look at their faces: there is no ecstasy in them, it is as if nothing has happened. When the energy forces itself, when the energy is too much, they throw it.
The ordinary sex act is just like this, but moralists have been saying quite the contrary. They say, "Do not indulge, do not `enjoy'." They say, "This is as animals do." This is wrong! Animals never enjoy; only man can enjoy. And the deeper you can enjoy, the higher is the kind of humanity that is born. And if your sex act can become meditative, ecstatic, the highest is touched. But remember tantra: it is a valley orgasm, it is not a peak experience. It is a valley experience!
In the West, Abraham Maslow has made this term "peak experience" very famous. You go into excitement towards the peak, and then you fall. That is why, after every sex act, you feel a fall. And it is natural: you are falling from a peak. You will never feel that after a tantric sex experience. Then you are not falling. You cannot fall any further because you have been in the valley. Rather, you are rising.
When you come back after a tantric sex act, you have risen, not fallen. You feel filled with energy, more vital, more alive, radiant. And that ecstasy will last for hours, even for days. It depends on how deeply you were in it. If you move into it, sooner or later you will realize that ejaculation is wastage of energy. No need of it -- unless you need children. And with a tantric sex experience, you will feel a deep relaxation the whole day. One tantric sex experience, and even for days you will feel relaxed -- at ease, at home, non-violent, non-angry, non-depressed. And this type of person is never a danger to others. If he can, he will help others to be happy. If he cannot, at least he will not make anyone unhappy.
Only tantra can create a new man, and this man who can know timelessness, egolessness and deep non-duality with existence will grow. A dimension has opened. It is not far away, the day is not very far away, when sex will simply disappear. When sex disappears without your knowledge, when suddenly one day, you realize that sex has disappeared completely and there is no lust, then BRAHMACHARYA is born. But this is arduous. It looks arduous because of too much false teaching, and you feel afraid of it also because of your mind's conditioning.
Of two things we are very much afraid -- sex and death -- and both are basic. A really religious seeker will enter both. He will experience sex to know what it is because to know sex is to know life. And he would also like to know what death is because unless death is known you cannot know what eternal life is. If you can enter sex to its very center you will know what life is, and if you can enter into death voluntarily, to its very center, then the moment you touch the center of death you become eternal. Then you are immortal because death is something that happens just on the periphery.
Sex and death both are basic for a real seeker, but for ordinary humanity both are taboo. No one talks about them, and both are basic and both are deeply related. They are so deeply related that even upon entering sex you enter a certain death -- because you are dying. The ego is disappearing; time is disappearing; your individuality is disappearing. You are dying! Sex is also a subtle death. And if you can know that sex is a subtle death, death can become a great sexual orgasm.
A Socrates entering death is not afraid. Rather, he is very much enthusiastic, thrilled, excited to know what death is. There is a deep welcome in his heart. Why? Because if you have known the small death of sex and you have known the bliss that follows it, you would like to know the greater death, the greater bliss that is hidden behind it. But for us both are taboo. For tantra, both are basic dimensions for search. One has to go through them.
-Osho, “Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1, #34, Q2”
Question 4
Last night you said that the full act should be slow and unhurried, but you also said that one should not have any control over the sexual act and that one should become total. this confuses me. please explain these two things.
It is not control. Control is a different thing and relaxation is totally different. In sex, you are relaxing in it, not controlling it. If you are controlling it, there will be no relaxation. If you are controlling it, sooner or later you will be hurried to finish it because control is a strain. And every strain creates tension, and tension creates a necessity, a need, to release. It is not a control; you are not resisting something. You are simply not in a hurry because sex is not happening in order to move somewhere. You are not going somewhere. It is just a play; there is no goal. Nothing is to be reached, so why hurry?
But a man who is always, in every act, present totally... If you are hurried in everything, you will be hurried in your sex act also, because YOU will be there. A person who is very much time-conscious will be hurried in his sex act also -- as if time is being wasted. So we ask for instant coffee and for instant sex. With coffee it is good, but with sex it is simply nonsense. There can be no instant sex. It is not work and it is not something which you can hurry. Through hurry you will destroy it; you will miss the very point. Enjoy it because through it a timelessness is to be felt. If you are in a hurry, then timelessness cannot be felt.
Tantra says go unhurriedly, slowly enjoying it just as if you are going for a walk in the morning -- not as if you are going to the office. That is a different thing. When you are going to the office you are in a hurry to reach somewhere, and when you are on a walk in the morning you are not in a hurry because you are not going anywhere. You are simply going, there is no hurry, there is no goal. You can return from any point.
This unhurriedness is basic to create the valley; otherwise the peak will be created. And when this is said, it does not mean that you have to control. You are not to control your excitement, because that is contradictory. You CANNOT control excitement. If you control it, you are creating a double excitement. Just relax! Take it as a play; do not make any end. The beginning is enough.
In the act, close your eyes. Feel the other's body, feel the other's energy flowing towards you and be merged in it, melt in it. It will come. The old habit may persist for a few days; then it will go. But do not force it to go. Just go on relaxing, relaxing, relaxing, and if there is no ejaculation do not feel that something has gone wrong. A man feels that something has gone wrong if there is no ejaculation.; he tends to feel that something has gone wrong. Nothing has gone wrong! And do not feel that you have missed something: you have not missed. In the beginning it will be felt as if you are missing something, because the excitement and the peak will not be there. Before the valley comes you will feel that you are missing something, but this is just an old habit. Within a period, within a month or three weeks, the valley will start appearing, and when the valley appears you will forget your peaks. No peak is worth this. But you have to wait, and do not force it and do not control it. Just relax.
Relaxation is a problem -- because when we say, "Relax," in the mind it is translated as if some effort is to be made. Our language gives this appearance. I was reading one book. The book is entitled, YOU MUST RELAX! You MUST! The very "must" will not allow you to relax, because when it becomes a goal, you "must," and if you are not able you will feel frustrated. The very "must" gives you a feeling of hard effort -- of an arduous journey. You cannot relax if you are thinking in terms of "must."
Language is a problem. There are certain things which language always expresses wrongly. For example, relaxation: if I say to relax, then too it becomes an effort and you will ask, "How to relax?" With "how" you miss the point. You cannot ask "How?" Then you are asking for a technique, and technique will create effort, effort will create tension. So if you ask me how to relax, I will say do not do anything: just relax. Just lie down and wait, do not do anything! All that you can do will be the barrier; it will create the hindrance.
If you start counting from one to a hundred and back from a hundred to one, you will remain awake the whole night. And if sometimes you have fallen asleep because of counting, it is not because of counting. It is because you counted and counted, and then you became bored -- because of that boredom. It is not because of counting -- only because of boredom. And then you forgot counting and then sleep came. But sleep comes, relaxation comes, only when you are not doing anything: this is the problem.
When I say "sex act" it looks like you need an effort. You do not! Just start playing with your beloved or your lover; just go on playing. Feel each other, be sensitive to each other, just like small children playing or just like dogs playing -- animals playing. Just go on playing, and do not think about the sex act at all. It may happen, it may not happen.
If it happens through just playing, it will lead you to the valley more easily. If you think about it, then you are already ahead of yourself: you are playing with your beloved, but you are THINKING of the sex act. Then the playing is false. You are not here and the mind is in the future, and this mind will always move in the future.
When you are in the sex act, the mind is thinking about how to finish it. It is always ahead of you. Do not allow it! Just play, and forget about any sex act. It will happen. Then allow it to happen. Then it will be easy to relax, and when it happens just relax. Be together. Be in each other's presence and feel happy.
Negatively, something can be done. For example, when you get excited you breathe fast because excitement needs fast breathing. For relaxation it is good, helpful, if you breathe deeply -- not fast, but slow, breathing very easily -- being at ease. Then the sex act can be prolonged.
Don't talk, don't say anything, because that creates disturbance. Don't use mind, use bodies. Use mind only to feel what is happening. Don't think, just feel what is happening -- the warmth that is flowing, the love that is flowing, the energy that is encountered. Just feel it.
Be aware, and that too should not be made a strain. Float effortlessly. Then only will the valley appear, and once the valley appears YOU are transcended.
Once you feel and realize the valley, the relaxed orgasm, it is already a transcendence. Then sex is not there. It has become a meditation -- a SAMADHI.
-Osho, “Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 1, #34, Q4”