According to Osho, ideas about sex and superconsciousness do not change in essence with age; the body grows old, but consciousness can grow up. After enlightenment, the truth remains the same while understanding deepens, clarifies, and gains stronger roots and arguments. Real growth is evolution of awareness, not aging, and continues beyond death.
Your body ages, but your understanding of sex and higher consciousness can keep getting clearer and stronger without changing its basic truth.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, as one grows old, one's ideas slowly change. Are your ideas about sex to superconsciousness the same? Your comment please.
Perhaps you are not aware that there are two kinds of growth. Most people grow old; a few people simply grow up. I belong to the second category. I don't grow old, I simply grow up. The body will grow old, but the body has nothing to do with my ideas. My consciousness grows up. I have more profound ideas about sex and superconsciousness than I had before. There has been evolution about everything in me, but whatever I have said before has deepened, has become more solid. Now I have more arguments for it -- that's what growing up means. Nothing has changed, only everything has become more clear, more solid, more conclusive. I have been thinking to speak -- because I have never read my books -- on each book again, so that you can see that I have not contradicted a single thing in those books. Although…
As one evolves spiritually, interest in sex may become less strong. So if I'm not so sexy these days am I getting older or closer to enlightenment?
Love is really secondary for a young man; his whole interest is sex. When a young man is telling a girl, "I love you", he's just planning how to hop into the bed. All this is nonsense, he knows, but it has to be done, it is part of the game. If you ask a woman suddenly, "How about it?" she may scream or call the police; it is so unexpected. You have to persuade. And she is also thinking -- if you go on persuading long enough, she becomes bored. If you go on saying, "I love you, I love you," and there is no sign of hopping into the bed, she becomes fed-up. The introduction should not be too long. It should not be like George Bernard Shaw where the book consists of only a hundred pages and the introduction is two hundred pages. Who waits for the…
Beloved Osho, can it be true that sex is already over? I have been your sannyasin for four and a half years and my body is thirty-one years of age. I never planned to drop sex, but now it feels like it has dropped me. Am I a quicky or what?
Psychology has accepted that body and mind don't grow together. Sometimes, most of the time, the mind is lagging behind and the body goes on growing. A few times, in rare cases, the mind grows ahead and the body lags behind. When Emerson, a great creative and sensitive man, was asked about his age, he said, "Three hundred and sixty years." The people who were present could not believe it; they could not believe that Emerson, a man of truth, a very innocent man, a man loved and respected by all those who could understand the heights of consciousness... why should he lie about such a thing? Three hundred and sixty years old? -- he does not look more than sixty. What to make of it? Finally, one man asked, "Perhaps I could not rightly hear what you said. Will you please repeat it?" Emerson laughed and said, "Why are…
Sex is life. It is life energy, elan vital, libido -- whatsoever you call it. Once you give it total freedom, spontaneity, by and by you will see that without repressing it, it starts being transformed into a subtle understanding. But that is not repression. Your whole sensitivity remains the same, on the peak. You retain your clarity of eyes, clarity of thinking, clarity of every door of your being; everything remains clear and open. By and by sex starts being transformed into a higher plane. You become more creative. You start creating something -- a painting, a poetry, a music playing on the instrument or something. This is not repression... this is expression. Then sex disappears -- that's what brahmacharya is. The real celibacy... you become virgin again. Just see. A child is born. The child is virgin, absolutely innocent.
Beloved master, are will and surrender two names of the same path? Kindly comment.
There is only one path. What you decide to call it does not matter. The word `surrender' and the word `will' appear to be diametrically opposite, but in reality they are complementary. They are not contradictory. It is a little subtle. Only a man of will can surrender, because surrender needs tremendous courage. Never think that surrender is for those who are weak. Surrender is for those who are tremendously strong, so strong that they can even surrender their ego to the master. It needs tremendous courage, guts. It needs will, will to surrender. If you don't have a will you cannot surrender. Who will surrender? But will alone will not help. Will alone will enhance your ego and will take you away from the path. Will as a master is dangerous, harmful; will as a servant to surrender is beautiful. Use will to serve surrender and you will be…