Do we have to transcend sex before achieving enlightenment?

Question: BELOVED OSHO, DO WE HAVE TO TRANSCEND SEX BEFORE GETTING ENLIGHTENED? You don't have to transcend anything. You have to live everything that is natural to you, and live it fully, without any inhibition -- joyously, aesthetically. Just by living it deeply, a transcendence will come. You are not to transcend anything. Remember my words. A transcendence will come by itself, and when it comes by itself it is such a release and such a freedom. If you try to transcend, you are going to repress, and repression is the sole reason why people cannot transcend; so you are getting into a vicious circle. You want to transcend, so you repress, and because you repress you cannot transcend, so you repress more. As you repress more, you become more incapable of transcendence. Live it out fully, without any condemnation, without any religion interfering with your life.

How to start the journey? What does it exactly mean to transcend sex?

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…

Can't sex be transcended without going into it?

Then what is the need to transcend it? The need of transcendence arises only because you are in it. You are born in it, you are born out of it. You are a sexual phenomenon. Except for Jesus, nobody has been born of a virgin. And Christians insist too much on the theory that Mary was a virgin so that they can condemn sex. If Jesus is also born of sex, then it will be difficult to condemn sex. In fact, Jesus was born out of sex as much as anybody else. The body has to be constituted from male and female energy, otherwise the body cannot be constituted. To say that Mary was virgin is to say that you have electricity in your house with only one pole: positive or negative. That will be just as nonsensical. Electricity needs to have both poles, positive and negative. Without those two…

Beloved Osho, when you said that you are not celibate, I was shocked. I guess I thought you had transcended sex. Why did this disturb me?

I was also shocked, because I was thinking you all would be shocked and only one camel got the shock. But his question is meaningful. You were shocked, Mr. Camel, because you had certain expectations of me. It is strange -- I don't expect anything from you, and you go on expecting how I should be, what I should do, what I should not. I am giving you total freedom, and you want me to be a prisoner of your expectations? You were shocked because of the long, ancient tradition of a very surprising phenomenon: masters have been imposing their ideas on their disciples; in return the disciples were imposing their ideas on the masters. And it was not that the master was really a master -- because he followed his own followers, he fulfilled their expectations. If he does not fulfill their expectations all his respectability is gone, the…

Osho, why do indians think of sex in terms of need instead of fun? They also think at the same time that they have transcended sex, but in reality it has only been suppressed. Osho, is there any similarity between suppression and transcendence which can mislead people, as you sometimes say that there is some similarity between a buddha and a madman?

But India is in a sad state, and the saddest thing is that Indians try to hide it rather than expose it. They are angry at me because I am exposing the truth as it is. They are angry at me because I am not trying to cover it up. They would like me, they would respect me, they would call me a great mahatma, an incarnation of God and all kinds of rubbish, but on one condition: that I go on covering their wounds. I cannot cover anybody's wounds. I can heal them, but the healing process is a totally different process. First you have to expose your wounds to the sun, to the wind. You have to expose them. It hurts! And wounds which have been kept secret for thousands of years, suddenly exposed.... You cannot believe it. You have always believed that you are great spiritualists, and…