Question 6

I am getting old and losing all interest in women. what should i do?

 

 

Sir, go on losing your interest! That's perfectly good. Nothing is wrong in it. And be perfectly assured that no woman is going to miss you. On the contrary, they will all be very happy.

 

But in the West, particularly since Freud opened the Pandora's box the idea has arisen that you have to remain sexual to the very end, because sex is synonymous with life.

 

So even if you are seventy or eighty, you have to remain interested in sex. If you lose interest in sex, that means you are losing interest in life, that means you are no more needed, that means you are useless now. You can drop dead or go to the parliament, but you are useless.

 

This idea that sex and life are synonymous is utterly baseless. Sex and life are synonymous at a certain stage. In childhood they are not synonymous; in youth they are synonymous; in old age they are again not synonymous. There are phases. The child is not interested, the young man is interested -- and the only interest is in sex.

 

But in the West there is an effort going on to remain young; you should not get old. People go on befooling themselves in many ways that they are still young. New panaceas have been found again and again, new kinds of elixirs that will keep you young forever. And people are so foolish that they are always ready to accept any nonsense to remain young. Old age is thought to be a kind of disease. To be old means you are ill -- in the West. That is not right.

 

Old age has its own beauties, its own treasures, just as youth has its own beauties and treasures. And certainly the treasures that an old man comes upon are far more valuable than the treasures of youth. Because the old man has lived his youth, he has known all that, he has seen that, he has gone through it. He has lived the illusion and he has known the disillusionment of it all. Now he is wiser than he ever was; he is becoming innocent again. When sex disappears you attain to a kind of innocence. You become a child again, and a mature child.

 

In the East we have a totally different vision of life. In the East we have respected the old men, not the young, because the old are at the peak -- life's journey reaching to its goal. In the West the old are just something to be discarded, the old are just to be thrown on some junkyard. You make houses for the old where you go on piling them up, or hospitals. Nobody wants anything to do with old people -- as if they were meaningless, worthless. And they have lived their whole life, and they have learnt many secrets of life. They can be great teachers -- only they can be teachers.

 

In the East this has been the traditional way: that the old person should become the teacher of the young, because he has lived, grown, understood. He can give you a better direction, with more maturity, with more clarity. Old age is the age to prepare for death. And that is the greatest preparation because you will be going on the longest journey -- into the unknown. If you remain interested in sex, it will keep you diverted from death. That's what is happening in the West.

 

In the West people have not accepted death yet as part of life. Death is a taboo, just as sex was a taboo just a hundred years ago. Nobody talked about sex a hundred years ago. It was impossible to talk about it or to write about it. It was such a taboo that in the Victorian age ladies used to cover the legs of their chairs too -- because they are legs, and legs should not be shown.

 

Freud introduced a great revolution The world is waiting for another Freud to destroy the greater taboo of death. He destroyed the taboo of sex, and the world is far better because of it. Freud is one of the greatest benefactors. Another Freud is needed to destroy the other taboo -- which is greater.

 

Death has to be accepted. With the acceptance of death you start accepting old age. And in acceptance there is relaxation. And once you are no more interested in sex, your whole attention can be focused on death. Remember, sex and death are polar opposites. If you remain interested in sex, when will you prepare for death? Your attention will remain focused on sex, and you will die without any preparation.

 

Meditation is a preparation for death. Now prepare for death. Meditate. You are no more interested in women -- good. Now become interested in your own self. The woman is outside you; that is the interest in the other. Or, if you are a woman, then the man is outside you, and that is interest in the other. Now become interested in yourself. Now go into the discovery of the self, now go on an inward journey.

 

You ask, 'I am getting old and losing all interest in women. What should I do?'

 

Lose interest. Allow it to happen. Don't try to create it unnecessarily. If it is going on its own, it is beautiful.

 

I have heard...

 

Max, aged seventy-six, upon returning to his apartment late one night, was startled to find a girl of about eighteen ran-sacking the place.

 

'Young woman, you are a thief!' he said. 'I'm going to call the police.'

 

'Mister,' she pleaded, 'if I'm arrested again, I'll be sent away for years. Please don't call the police.'

 

'I'm sorry, but I have to do it!' Max replied.

 

'Look,' she cried, 'I'll do anything. I'll give you my body.'

 

'Okay,' said the senior citizen, 'take off your clothes and get in bed.'

 

The girl did and Max quickly followed. He tried and tried and tried for about twenty minutes. Exhausted and in defeat, he finally gave up.

 

'It's no use,' sighed Max. 'I just can't make it. I'll have to call the police.'

 

And you ask me what to do...? 'What should I do?'

 

Do you want to call the police? Enough is enough. Now let that nonsense go. Let that obsession go. Now turn your energy towards death. Now look into death face to face. Now encounter death. And to encounter death is the greatest experience in life. And if you can encounter death, you will come to know that you are deathless. To face death is the only way to know that you are deathless, that only the body dies, and you never die. And once you have known it, you are ready, ready for the journey, and when death comes, you will go laughing and dancing and singing into it.

 

And a man who can go laughing, dancing, and singing into death, prayerfully, meditatively, comes to know the greatest orgasm that is in the world. Sexual orgasm is nothing, because in sexual orgasm only a small, minute part of your life energy leaves your body, and you feel a great relaxation. In death your whole life energy leaves the body. No sexual orgasm can be compared with that cosmic orgasm, that total orgasm that death brings to you.

 

Don't miss death. Death is going to give you the greatest gift in life, the parting gift. But only a few people come to it because nobody is ready for it. Death takes you unawares. And you are so frightened, and you are so concerned with sex that you cling to life.

 

Do you know that it almost always happens...? In the East it has been one of the secrets to know about a man. When a man dies, if he is clinging too much to life and is still interested in sex, he will die with an erection. That shows that the poor fellow died without any readiness -- even in death he was full of sex fantasies. It happens almost always. Unless you have become a great meditator, it is going to happen to you too that while dying you will fantasize about sex, you will be making love -- at least in your imagination.

 

This is no way to die. This is very insulting to death, and insulting to God, and very insulting to yourself. Let sex disappear -- it is time. Relax into non-sexuality. Non-sexuality will make you centred. Stop chasing women, and start chasing yourself. You cannot do both. And get ready. Death may knock you down any moment; one never knows when it is coming. Prepare. Allow yourself to enjoy meditation as much as possible. Transform your sexual energy into meditative energy; it is the same energy, just the direction changes: it no longer flows downward and outward, it starts flowing inward and upward. And this same energy opens the bud of the Golden Flower in you. This is the whole secret.

 

Now you have come naturally to the right point, and you are asking me, 'What should I do?' You are asking for some recipes to again create the sexuality which is disappearing. You are asking for some props, you are asking for some help so that you can go on playing the same foolish game even in your old age.

 

It is good when you are young, because then you are foolish. It is very rare to become alert and aware and meditative when you are young. If you can become, you have a rare genius. But if you cannot become meditative even in old age, then you are just stupid, utterly stupid.

 

It is good to fool around when you are young. That foolishness is part of growth; it helps you. The woman or the man outside becomes the mirror; they reflect you, they help you to see who you are. Love is very revealing. But finally one has to come to see oneself within, not in a mirror. Even the mirror has to be dropped. One has to be alone. And the purity of aloneness is infinite. And the bliss of aloneness is eternal.

 

Now the moment has come. Just let this interest in women go, and suddenly you will find another interest arising in you -- it is almost simultaneous -- the interest in meditation. And then you can have the last gift that life can give to you: a meditative death, a death in SATORI, in SAMADHI, in ecstasy. And you will know the total orgasmic experience. That experience is enough; then you will never be coming back into life, into the body, into this prison.

 

In the East this has been our goal: how not to be born again, because this whole process of being born and dying again and again is a boring process; it is utterly futile. In the final analysis it is just a dream, and not even a nice dream but a nightmare.

 

My suggestion to you is: you have lived your life, you have seen the pleasures of the body, you have looked into relationship and you have learned whatsoever was to be learned from it, now it is time to turn inwards.

 

-Osho, “The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1,#4, Q6”

 

 

 

 

Question : 

I am only sixty-five but have already lost all interest in sex. what should i do?

It is even more difficult than the first question. Listening to me he must have misunderstood me. Listening to me praising sexuality so highly he must have started feeling a little restless. He says, 'I am only sixty-five'. Only? When do you think you are going to drop sex -- six hundred and fifty? Enough is enough. Let young people be foolish. It is time now.

Remember, one very, very secret Moe of yoga is that whenever all interest disappears naturally, is lot repressed, when all interest in sex disappears naturally, that is the time you can become alert that you can be alive for only fourteen years more on this earth, not more than that.

Sex becomes mature when you are fourteen. It takes fourteen years from birth to sex. And it is exactly the same at the other end. It takes fourteen years from sex to death. So if you are sixty-five and the interest in sex is naturally going away -- beautiful, very good! Now you have to prepare for the other journey, for the further shore. Maybe only fourteen, fifteen years are left. By the time you are eighty you will be gone.

By going, sex gives the hint -- now start getting ready for death. It is a circle, life is a circle. Sex appears at a certain time, it disappears at a curtain time, and if people live naturally then there still be no confusion ever. In fact, a man can know how much more he is going to live just by knowing that sex is disappearing.

But we are confused because we don't know if sex; is disappearing naturally or if our repressions -- Christianity, Hinduism, this and that -- have done it. We are confused because we have lost track of nature -- otherwise nature ii very clear.

Sixty-five is more than enough. You let it go now. There are other things to do.

A college celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its first commencement invited a senator, its most prominent son, to make a speech.

'It was fifty years ago that our class had its commencement,' he began. 'Those fifty years have flown on eagles' wings. But on this occasion, with old friends around me, the hands of the clock are turned back, and I see myself on a moonlit night, sitting out on yonder college wall, the same wall that is out there now. I believe it was the same apple tree which still stands there, like myself now grown a little older. That night fifty years ago, I sat up on that wall beside a pretty girl with the moon full and the apple blossoms overhead. Under the inspiration of the time and place, I kissed that girl. If that young lady, now grown a little older in years, should happen to be in this audience and is no more ashamed of the occasion than I am, I wish she would rise.'

Nineteen gray-haired ladies stood up!

Another anecdote....

After a town hall meeting in a mid-western city a woman saw Alexander Woolcott standing alone in the lobby. Impulsively she went up to tell him of the pleasures his lecture had given her and said -- this lady who had grown-up grandchildren and admitted having passed seventy -- 'I was encouraged to speak to you because you said you loved old ladies.'

'Yes,' replied Woolcott, 'I do, but I also like them your age!'

You say only sixty-five. And Woolcott said, 'Yes, I love old ladies and I also like them your age!' Because there are people who never think that they are old -- seventy, just seventy; eighty, only eighty. How we go on postponing death. How we go on forgetting that death comes, that death is coming.

And you ask me: What should I do? Sir, let it go. It is time.

Meditate on this small joke.

An elderly couple down in New Mexico were listening to one of those faith healers on the radio. 'I will heal you,' he intoned. 'You out there in radio land, I will heal all of you. Just keep those checks and money orders coming, folks. And now for our healing period.... Put one hand on the radio and one hand on the part of your body that needs help, and I shall heal the sick.' The old lady put one hand on the radio and one hand on her heart. The old man put one hand on the radio and the other in his lap.

'Paw,' the old lady said, 'he said he'd heal the sick... not raise the dead.'

 

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