According to Osho, true intimacy arises when the heart is empty—free of ego, claims, and personal exclusivity. In that emptiness you fall into the same tune and dance as the master, as existence itself. Such intimacy depends on you, not the other; it transcends names, distance, and meetings, and because it is universal, it creates no jealousy.
Empty your heart of ego and expectations so you naturally harmonize with life and feel close beyond people or distance.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, of my many fears, the one of which I am most aware is that of intimacy. I am like a hit and run driver in my relationships with people. Could you speak to me of my fear of intimacy?
Just an idea came into his mind at that moment that perhaps there is a train going to hell, also. So he rushed back to the station, and the train was standing at the platform, ready to leave for hell. He entered the train, and as the hell started coming closer, he was even more puzzled. The wind was fragrant with flowers. There was so much greenery, lush green. The station was so beautiful -- he had never thought that a station could be so beautiful. And people looked so happy, so joyous. He said, "My god, is there something wrong or what?" He enquired, "Is this really hell?" They said, "It used to be. Before Gautam Buddha, Socrates, Epicurus, Mahavira, Lao Tzu, people like these came here, it used to be hell. But now they have transformed the whole place." He entered hell and he could not believe --…
Recently you talked again about the adverse aspects of marriage. Would you please talk about what you mean by intimacy? Particularly, when is staying together through difficult times positive and when is it negative?
Just getting married to a woman doesn't mean that you are no longer interested in any other woman. In fact, the day you are not interested in any other women, you will not be interested in your wife either. Why? For what? What has your wife got that is special? If you are no longer interested in women you will not be interested in your wife either. You are in love with her because you are in love with women still. She is just a woman. And sometimes you come across a woman who enchants you. You will say it to your wife. And you will face the turmoil that will arise. It is not trivia -- because it will create jealousy. it will create a struggle, it will disturb all rest. you will not be able to sleep at night. The wife will be throwing pillows at you. To…
You have your space, she has her space. And one has to be respectful now, that the other's space should not be in any way interfered with; it should not be trespassed. If you trespass it, you hurt the other; you start destroying the other's individuality. And because the other loves you, she or he will go on tolerating it. But toleration is one thing; it is not something very beautiful. If the other is only tolerating it, then sooner or later the other will take revenge. The other cannot forgive you and it goes on accumulating -- one day, another day, another day.... You have interfered with a thousand and one things, then they all pile up, and then one day they explode. That's why lovers go on fighting. That fight is because of this constant interference.
Why do I feel fear when somebody comes close to me?
You may not even have heard about the other two. Even the first is a rarity. Very few people attain to the real physical orgasm, they have forgotten about it. They think that ejaculation is orgasm. So many men believe that they have orgasm and because women don't ejaculate, not at least visibly, eighty per cent of women think that they don't have any orgasm. But ejaculation is not orgasm. It is a very local release, a sexual release -- it is not orgasm. A release is a negative phenomenon -- you simply lose energy -- and orgasm is a totally different thing. It is a dance of energy, not a release. It is an ecstatic state of energy. The energy becomes a flow. And it is all over the body; it is not sexual, it is physical. Each cell and each fibre of your body throbs with new joy.…
It is said that a young man, very full of ego, came to see a great sufi mystic, Hassan. The young man had reason to be egoistic. He belonged to the royal family and he had the Greatest teachers of his country to teach him. He visited almost all the Feat masters available and had been to every enlightened person that he had heard of. He knew many things, he had collected much knowledge, and he was very intellectual. His memory was perfect, he could recite the whole of the koran, so of course there was reason to be egoistic. When he came to Hassan, he started telling him that he had lived with this master and with that, that he had been reading this and reading that. Hassan started laughing, so the young man said, .'Why are you laughing?' He felt a little annoyed.