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Osho on How often should one indulge in sex to support the meditation process?

How often should one indulge in sex to support the meditation process?

Indulge in the sacred embrace of tantra as often as your awareness and relaxation allow, for in this union, you are revitalized rather than depleted.

— Osho
According to Osho, when sex is the usual peak-orgasm discharge, it should be occasional because it spends bio-energy; it is merely a tranquilizer. But as tantric valley orgasm—restful, non-ejaculatory, meditative embrace—you lose nothing and are revitalized, so there is no fixed limit: indulge as often as you like, guided by relaxation, awareness, and mutual sensitivity, using excitement only to sustain relaxed union.

If sex drains you, do it less; if you practice calm, non-spending tantric love, you can do it anytime because it feeds your energy and meditation.

In His Own Words

From the Discourses

Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Vol 1 · Discourse 34
1973-02-23 · Woodlands, Bombay · English

"how often should one indulge in sex in order to help and not to hinder the meditation process?"

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…
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Beloved Of My Heart · Discourse 17
1976-05-19 · Chuang Tzu Auditorium · English
It is not that you are using your sexual organs only; the sex has spread all over. You head is as much a part of it as your feet. You have become a phallus. You are no more man; you are just energy. She is also no more a woman; just energy, a vulva. It is a very wild thing. If you meditate before and then worship each other, there is no danger; everything will move rightly. You will attain to a peak of orgasm that you have never known. Sometimes you will achieve it: a very great orgasm in which the whole body throbs and pulsates. By and by you reach a climax; again you come down. It will cleanse your whole being, the whole system. Sometimes there will be no ejaculation but orgasm will be there.
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Nowhere To Go But In · Discourse 12
1974-06-05 · Buddha Hall · English

Beloved Osho, yesterday you told us not to throw out our anger and hatred and other emotions onto others. But entering into meditation, when all the suppressed sexual energy leaps up, the other is necessary to cathart this energy. And when this energy manifests itself in its primitive form like the wild force of a typhoon, neither control nor witnessing help. It only demands for expression. And with sex are attached all our moral values. So if there is no deep accord and understanding between husband and wife, should the seeker then look for a suitable partner with whom to give this sex-energy

Habits have a certain trick to them. If, for example, a man is addicted to smoking cigarettes, he no longer gets much satisfaction out of smoking a cigarette; but if he does not smoke, he feels deprived and restless, he feels a craving for it. This is exactly the nature of habit. If you watch closely, you will see that if you do it you don't get anything from it, but if you don't do it you feel as if you are losing something. And this is just the way it is with sex for you: this too is only a habit, you just go on doing it. So when the priests and saints declare that there is nothing in it, you find yourself agreeing, because in your experience too there is no substance to your sexual act. But I am telling you, if sex surges all over your body…
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Sahaj Yog · Discourse 8
1978-11-28 · Pune · Hindi · English translation

Osho, human beings either go to the excess of sexual indulgence or to the opposite extreme of the frustration born of sexual repression. What is Sahaj Yoga’s vision on this subject—please be kind enough to explain it to us.

The Taj Mahal is the imagination of Sufi fakirs. An emperor had it built, but the conception was given by Sufis. Those who built it were Sufi fakirs too. That’s why, if you sit silently and look at the Taj on a full-moon night for an hour or two, an unparalleled meditation descends. The signatures of Sufis are upon it. Its very form is such that it dissolves you into meditation. Millions of statues of Buddha were made—who made them? Not shopkeepers. Not mere technicians either. Such images of Buddha were made that if you just sit by them—stone, yes, but they poured so much into the stone; gave it such a form, such a hue, such a feeling—that even sitting near the stone something within you becomes still. In China there is a temple—the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas. It took centuries. Monks kept making, kept making, kept making.…
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Nahin Ram Bin Thaon · Discourse 12
1974-06-05 · Pune · Hindi · English translation

Osho, yesterday you said not to throw anger, hatred and the like onto others. But when one goes into meditation and the repressed sexual energy leaps out, doesn’t it require another person for its catharsis? And when this sexual energy erupts like a fierce primordial storm, neither control nor witnessing seems to work—it demands expression. Yet all our moral values are tied to sex. So if the existing husband or wife does not have enough depth for such expression, should the seeker look for a suitable partner? And won’t that create many entanglements?

And semen is not some fixed treasure stored within you, such that if some goes out, the stock diminishes. It is being produced every moment: as the body breathes, eats, exercises, semen is produced. Modern medical research is quite different, even opposite: the more a man uses semen, the longer his virility lasts. The one who, out of fear, stops sexual use early loses semen production early, because when you use semen, the whole body engages again in producing it. When you do not use it, the body need not engage; slowly the capacity to produce declines. This may look paradoxical: those who have more sex can remain capable longer; those who have less, empty out sooner. Thus in the West doctors advise that if intercourse can continue even into seventy, eighty, ninety, the chance of living longer increases—the body remains fresh. Old semen becomes stale and inert; with the…
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