According to Osho, swinging between sexual indulgence and celibacy is the mind's pendulum: each extreme fuels the other, creating a subtle vicious circle. Indulgence breeds frustration; repression dams energy until it explodes in fantasies and relapse. Freedom comes by learning the middle way - natural, simple responsiveness - neither indulgent nor repressive. Resting in the center stills the pendulum; the mind's time-bound compulsions cease.
Like a clock that won’t stop swinging, chasing extremes of sex and celibacy keeps you stuck; relax into the natural middle so the swing ends.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, sometimes I indulge in sexuality and then feel very much frustrated. Then I move to another extreme. I become a celibate, but soon I start feeling frustrated again and start moving to the other extreme. This is a vicious circle I am caught in. What should I do?
ALMOST EVERYBODY IS CAUGHT in some vicious circle or other -- because mind cannot exist without a vicious circle. Somebody eats too much, gathers fat, becomes worried, starts dieting, fasting, eats less, feels hungry, becomes worried, starts eating more... and so on and so forth. Mind exists like the pendulum of a clock: it goes from one extreme to the other extreme. And you cannot get out of the vicious circle by moving to the other extreme, because the other extreme is part of the vicious circle. When the pendulum is going to the right, in fact it is gathering momentum to go to the left. When the pendulum is going to the left, it is gathering momentum to go to the right. This is the vicious circle, VERY subtle. When you are feeling frustrated with indulgence in sexuality, what is happening? You are becoming interested in celibacy, in all…
As higher awareness, they teach what they experience within. What fetters them they will call liberation.
A GLASS TRINKET COLOURED GREEN, TO THEM IS A (PRICELESS) EMERALD, DELUDED, THEY KNOW NOT A GEM FROM WHAT THEY THINK IT SHOULD BE. THEY TAKE COPPER TO BE GOLD. BOUND BY DISCURSIVE THOUGHT THEY THINK THESE THOUGHTS TO HE ULTIMATE REALITY. THEY LONG FOR THE PLEASURES EXPERIENCED IN DREAMS. THEY CALL THE PERISHABLE BODY-MIND ETERNAL BLISS SUPREME. BY THE SYMBOL EVAM (THEY THINK) SELF-CLEARNESS IS ACHIEVED, BY THE DIFFERENT SITUATIONS THAT DEMAND FOUR SEALS THEY CALL WHAT THEY HAVE FANCIED SPONTANEITY, BUT THIS IS LOOKING AT REFLECTIONS IN A MIRROR. AS UNDER DELUSION'S POWER A HERD OF DEER WILL RUSH FOR THE WATER IN A MIRAGE WHICH IS NOT RECOGNISED, SO ALSO THE DELUDED QUENCH NOT THEIR THIRST, ARE BOUND BY CHAINS AND FIND PLEASURE IN THEM, SAYING THAT ALL IS ULTIMATELY REAL. First, be total in your action -- the first seal is broken. Second, be honest in…
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.…
Last night you discussed the attitude of total acceptance as the basic ground for all tantric sadhana -- spiritual practice. If I remember correctly, on another day you said that the science of tantra teaches to be in the middle in everything, being free from the extremes in life. In this reference, explain how one can come to understand the difference between indulgence and repression in one's sex life."
So now try tantra. Tantra says, do not fight; no one ever changes with fight. Accept! Then there is no question of what is indulgence and what is repression, and what is brahmacharya and what is this and that. There is no question then! Whatsoever is, you accept it and flow with it. You dissolve your ego resistance, you relax into the existence and go wherever it leads. If the destiny of the existence is that you are meant to be an animal, then, says tantra, be an animal. What will happen out of it and how does it happen? Tantra says, total transformation happens - because once you accept, the inner division dissolves, you become one. Then there are not two in you - the saint and the animal, the saint repressing the animal and the animal throwing the saint aside every moment. Then there is no two in…
Isn't tantra a way of indulgence?
But Tantra is not indulgence at all. The repressive people have always thought that Tantra is indulgence; their minds are so much obsessed. For example: a man who goes to a monastery and lives there without ever seeing a woman, how can he believe that Saraha is not indulging when he lives with a woman? Not only lives but practises strange things: sitting before the woman naked, the woman is naked, and he goes on watching the woman; or even while making love to the woman he goes on watching. Now, you cannot watch his watching; you can see only that he is making love to a woman. And if you are repressive, your whole repressed sexuality will bubble up. You must start going mad! And you will project all that you have repressed in yourself on Saraha -- and Saraha is not doing anything like that; he is moving…