If you make love with your whole heart and no inner doubt, you don’t lose energy; you lose it when part of you resists.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you have said that if any action is total, energy is not lost. Please explain what you mean by total action. And also, in the process of sexual intercourse, what does it mean to be total or complete? Does it mean there is no loss of energy?
And here is the delightful paradox: if one becomes total in action, anger gradually becomes impossible—because total anger burns you up, it scorches you. Hatred becomes difficult—because complete hatred becomes poison; blisters rise in every pore. Enmity becomes difficult—because enmity then appears as self-destruction, as driving a dagger into one’s own chest. We can be angry only so long as we act incompletely. We can be enemies only so long as our acts are not total. The day our acts are complete, that day only the flower of love can bloom in our life. The day our act is complete, prayer becomes the very longing of our being. The day each act of our life becomes whole, that day God alone remains the one truth for us. When oneness arises within, oneness is seen without. As long as there are two within, there are two without. Not even two—there are…
There is a centre for everything in man's body. The mind is not a centre of sex. The ganglion is the centre of sex. Let the ganglion do its work, and the mind Its otherwise the mind-consciousness -- will be obsessed by that work. Man looks obsessed already. He is looking at naked photos, and the ganglion has no relation at all with naked photos. It has no eyes. He is looking at naked photos and thinking about them in the mind. He is planning and dreaming of coloured pictures. All these gather together and create confusion of the centres within. The mind will begin the work of the ganglion, but the ganglion cannot do me work of the mind. The intelligence will be spoilt, the mind will be confused and shattered.
Osho, you just said that in sexual intercourse both woman and man lose energy, but the common belief is that a woman is nourished by the man’s semen in intercourse. Please clarify.
Common beliefs are like that—just as the common belief is that the sun rises, or that the earth is flat. Common beliefs are often wrong, because “common” means seen from the surface, without going deep. The sun appears to rise; now we know well that the sun neither rises nor sets. Yet humanity will probably never get rid of the words sunrise and sunset; they will continue. The ground appears flat; nowhere does it look round. For thousands of years people believed it was flat. Today, to accept that it is round is hard—the ordinary mind is troubled: “How can it be round? It looks flat.” Common beliefs are often wrong because they rest on two things. First, on appearances—how things seem from the outside. Second, on what we want to believe—we adopt as truth what we prefer to be true. Ordinarily we do not want truth; we make what…
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…
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…