If people are taught to feel guilty about sex, they get nosy about nudity; accept it naturally and the urge to gawk fades.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho! At the Simhastha fair in Ujjain, there used to be a big crowd at the spot where Naga sadhus put on sexual displays—like pulling a jeep tied to the penis, etc. Why are people so curious to perform naked displays and to watch nudity, and why do they praise them? And when nothing of the sort happens in your ashram, why are people still angry with you and your ashram?
That’s why those who fast long fall into the illusion that their sexuality has ended. Nothing has ended; it has only dried up. Feed them again and it is back. Nothing has changed. Jain monks fall into the illusion that they have conquered sex. But they eat so little that even the minimal needs of the body are not met. Sex arises when enough food goes in that it creates energy beyond your needs—then sex arises. Think of sex as the flowering of your life. A tree that gets no energy—what flowers will it produce? It won’t even grow leaves, forget flowers. It will remain a dry stalk. For centuries man has been branded a sinner. The result is that deep down each person has become highly curious and avid for the very things that are forbidden. Prohibition has a quality: deny something—taste arises. In what you forbid, the relish…
A friend has asked, Osho, why should we be religious when neither the beginning nor the end is known, and there is no trace of God or soul? The enlightened ones speak of truth—if that truth is real, why can’t they make everyone experience it?
No one is telling you to be religious—at least Lao Tzu would not. The so-called religious people have created so much disturbance that it is better you do not become one of them. Lao Tzu does not say, “Be religious.” He simply says: be what you are. You may ask, why should I be what I am? Because that is the only thing you can be. There is no way to be anything else. Yes, you can try to be something else—and in that trying your life can be wasted. You may then say, why not waste life? No one can stop you. And precisely for this reason even the enlightened ones are defeated and cannot give you the knowledge of truth—because you say, why should we know the truth? What can the enlightened do? They can speak. They can try to awaken in you the thirst for the joy…
Osho, it is astonishing that a porno magazine published from India’s capital, which trades in obscenity, has written that you should be hanged. What is the secret behind this?
Anand Maitreya! There is not the slightest secret. The matter is absolutely straight and clear. Pornographic magazines sell because of your sadhus and renunciates! If things were up to me, porn magazines wouldn’t be able to sell anywhere in the world. If things were up to me, who would buy a porn magazine? For what purpose? Who buys porn magazines? Those very people who have repressed their sexual desire. Those who have not honored their sexuality, not welcomed it. Those who have fallen prey to pundits, priests, sadhus and monks. They are the ones who read porn magazines—though some read them hidden inside the Gita, some inside the Quran, some bound in a Bible cover—but it’s the same people. This whole world is full of “religious” people—so who is reading porn? The very ones who read books saying “celibacy is life” are the ones who read porn. These are not…
Osho, by conducting such experiments in the midst of society, doesn’t it create any immorality? And do onlookers gain or lose anything from this?
Nudity is being used by prostitutes, dancers, actresses, and advertisers too. But all of them are exploiting your sexual desire. Nowhere is nudity being used for the dissolution of your lust. Everywhere it is used for exploitation. Even to sell a car, they have to stand a half-naked woman next to it. A half-naked woman has nothing to do with the car. This makes no difference to the car’s quality, adds no strength to its mechanism, and proves nothing about the car being good. Yet the car sells—because, with a naked woman standing there and the car, in the human mind the car becomes a sex object; it becomes associated. Hence the color, contour, and shape that cars are gradually taking are those of the female body—their curves and turns are of the female form. As cars keep getting more curvy day by day, they are becoming symbols of sexuality.…
Osho, if the primitive ideology had a primitive idea, then it led to stagnation. Today we even have paper clothes—people say, paper clothes have come; if it rains, what will happen! But in the primitive days, among tribals, nothing of this sort ever arose in their hearts; there was nothing to hide, they roamed naked, as many still do today. So in a society that has seen two thousand, five thousand, ten thousand years of revolution and practice, does no such change come? Yet you advocated keeping the earlier idea.
No, I am not saying that either, I am not saying that either. What I am saying, I am giving you only as an example. I am not saying it should become like that, that we should hold on to that idea. All I am saying, only this much, is that the tribal mind does not have the same obsession with sex. Why not? Why is there no attraction for a nude picture for him? And why is there so much attraction for us? We are so attracted because the child’s natural curiosity to see the body has been stunted, blocked, suppressed. That suppressed desire then seeks other routes to look at naked bodies. And these routes are more dangerous. Because when you see a real naked body—now here is the surprising thing—if you see a naked body directly, the matter ends. But if you look at a nude picture,…