According to Osho, brooding over past sex or fantasizing about future encounters dissipates the mind’s sex-energy through mere thinking, inflating tension and the urge for release. Living wholly in the present stops this leakage, lessens anxiety, and conserves sexual vitality, allowing it to remain integrated and move upward rather than being wasted in downward discharge.
If you keep thinking about sex before or later, you drain your inner battery; if you stay with the now, the battery stays full and calm.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you have said that when the seeker reaches the fifth body, the distinction between woman and man disappears. Through what adjustment of the positive and negative electrical polarities in the first four bodies does this happen?
Whenever an incomplete woman and an incomplete man meet, both are weakened; afterward, both have less energy than before they met. In the meeting of a complete man and a complete woman the reverse happens: after they meet, both have more energy than before. Their own powers, dormant within, are awakened and activated by the nearness of the other. Previously too it was their own energy that spilled in the other’s presence; now it is their own energy that is stirred and revealed in the other’s presence. From this, a hint is received: can there be, within, a meeting of the complete man and the complete woman? For the first inner meeting was between an incomplete man and an incomplete woman. Inner maithuna of the third and fourth bodies brings freedom from duality Work begins on the second unit—the third and fourth bodies. When the third and fourth meet: in…
There is one more interesting thing to remember, The person who worries less about the past and the future, and worries about that which is in front of him, plunges himself deep into it and lives in it, has less of tensions in his life. The lesser the tension, more the necessity for sex because then sex begins to work as relief. Therefore a person is as sexed as he is worried. Just as it is in modern Europe and America. Their whole life is full of sex if it is full of cares and anxieties. The necessity for sex will be far less in a life free of cares and anxieties.
No, Osho, what happens is that our mind is in one of two states. Either I feel I will be able to solve it, or I’m afraid that I won’t be able to solve it...
Because of that ignorance, we create many problems we don’t even suspect. For instance, in India almost everyone assumes that the sexual act is devastating. Physiologically that is absolutely wrong—completely wrong. In fact, sexual inactivity is devastating. Activity is not devastating. And it is also interesting that anyone who thinks he can go to extremes in sexual activity is mistaken. The body has checks. You cannot go to extremes; there are bodily checks. Nature has arranged it so you cannot expend surplus force beyond what the body allows. But one can misuse it, right? Even misuse is not possible—if you use full understanding. As far as sex has been understood, misuse is not possible. Misuse is impossible. Then not just sex—by that argument you can’t misuse anything! If we extend that very argument, you can’t misuse anything! No, no—you can misuse many things. Why not sex? Because the entire arrangement…
In this same regard, another question has been asked: Osho, Vivekananda—or someone—has said, “Preserve semen; from it ojas will arise.”
But we constantly dwell near people, and we hear what people think, we know the thoughts people think. And what do people think? They read the morning paper; they talk of elections; of strikes; of fasts; of where riots have broken out; of where Hinduism is in danger, where Islam is in danger; they play cards, drink liquor, gamble, argue—these sorts of things. The more we stay among people, the smaller we become. We don’t notice our smallness, because we are surrounded by others just as small, and we feel content that “everyone else is like this too.” This vast universe spread around us, apart from human beings—this vastness has not yet severed its relation with God. These plants are still closer to God than we are; these moon and stars are still closer; the chirr of these tiny insects is closer still; the silence of these hills is nearer…
Beloved Osho, would you talk to us about using our sexual energy for growth, as it seems to be one of our main preoccupations in the west.
In a sexual orgasm you ARE. Being is there without any thinking. In this moment, if you can become alert, conscious, then sex can become the door towards the divine. And if in this moment you can become alert, that alertness can be carried in other moments also, in other experiences also. It can become a part of you. Then eating, walking, doing some work, you can carry that alertness. Through sex, the alertness has touched your deepest core. It has penetrated you. Now you can carry it. And, if you become meditative, you will come to realize a new fact. That fact is that it is not sex that gives you bliss, it is not sex that gives you the ecstasy. Rather, it is a thoughtless state of the mind and total involvement in the act that gives you a blissful feeling. Once you understand this then sex will…