Does a decrease in sexual interest indicate aging or progress towards enlightenment?

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.

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

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…

Beloved Osho, could dry leaves really be falling at such a young age? I am thirty, and I enjoy sex when it comes, though I don't come so often. I don't feel I am holding something down; on the contrary, I find I usually have to hold it up. Beloved Osho, it now takes me all night to do what I used to do all night. Am I missing, or is it missing?

Nityanando, this is the difference between the Eastern evolution of consciousness and the Western mind. In the East, to get rid of sex is a blessing; in the West, it is the ultimate calamity, it is dying before death. The day one starts feeling that his sexual energy is getting down, he starts counting days -- that death is not far away. In the East, the day one gets beyond sex, he rejoices -- the earlier the better -- because now the time has come to grow into a new dimension, into freedom from biology, into freedom from body, into freedom from mind. It is the beginning of the experience of your innermost self. Sex is continuously taking you away from yourself. Whether you are a man or a woman, it doesn't matter: sex takes you away from yourself. The moment sex is not there, there is no drive to…