According to Osho, orgasm is the nonsexual essence of unity: the dissolving of male–female polarities into a single energy where thought stops, time disappears, and pure, wide-awake awareness remains. Sex may trigger it, but it isn’t sexual. Meditation arises from this insight and can evoke the same orgasmic, timeless consciousness deliberately and sustainably, independent of a partner.
Orgasm, to Osho, is when everything becomes one and your mind and sense of time vanish—and meditation lets you feel this without sex, for longer.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, what is orgasm in reference to meditation and higher levels of consciousness? Isn't feeling orgasmic in a deep state of meditation totally nonsexual?
The experience of orgasm itself is always nonsexual. Even though you have achieved it through sex, it itself has no sexuality in it. You can reach to orgasm through sex. It is a merger of the negative and the positive polarities -- such a deep merger that the man is no longer man, the woman is no longer woman. They are not two; there is only one energy surrounding them both. They have melted into that energy. It may be for a moment -- that does not matter -- but the experience itself has nothing to do with sex. The first orgasm is bound to be attained through sex. And my own understanding is that meditation has grown out of the experience of orgasm, because the original founders -- particularly Shiva who, in his VIGYAN BHAIRVA TANTRA, has written, just like a scientific formula, about one hundred and twelve meditations;…
The song continues:
IN MAHAMUDRA ALL ONE'S SINS ARE BURNED; IN MAHAMUDRA ONE IS RELEASED FROM THE PRISON OF THIS WORLD. THIS IS THE DHARMA'S SUPREME TORCH. THOSE WHO DISBELIEVE IT ARE FOOLS, WHO EVER WALLOW IN MISERY AND SORROW. TO STRIVE FOR LIBERATION ONE SHOULD RELY ON A GURU. WHEN YOUR MIND RECEIVES HIS BLESSING EMANCIPATION IS AT HAND. ALAS, ALL THINGS IN THIS WORLD ARE MEANINGLESS, THEY ARE BUT SORROW'S SEEDS. SMALL TEACHINGS LEAD TO ACTS -- ONE SHOULD ONLY FOLLOW TEACHINGS THAT ARE GREAT. A master, a guru, is nothing but a window. One has to pass through him, one has to have a little taste -- then you can also open your own windows; otherwise the whole thing remains verbal. You can read Tilopa, but unless you find Tilopa nothing will happen to you. Your mind may go on, saying, "Maybe this man is mad, in some hallucination, dreaming,…
Beloved Osho, why is it still so difficult for me to see the worth of my feminine qualities? There is still something in me that judges them as weak and having a feeling of not being able to survive. Can you please say something about this?
It is the long condemnation of feminine qualities that has gone deep into the blood and the bones of women. It is man's conspiracy to prove himself superior to women -- which he is not. Man is deep down aware of the fact that the woman has something which he does not have. In the first place the woman is attractive to him, she looks beautiful. He falls in love with the woman, the woman becomes almost an addiction to him -- and that's where the trouble arises. The feeling of dependence on women which every man feels, makes him react in such a way that he tries to manage the woman as a slave -- spiritually a slave. He's also afraid because she is beautiful; ... she is beautiful not only to him -- she is beautiful to whomever looks at her, to whomever comes in contact with her.…
Please describe to us the spiritual significance of sex energy. How can we sublimate and spiritualize sex? Is it possible to have sex, to make love, as a meditation, as a jumping board toward higher levels of consciousness?
There is no such thing as sex energy. Energy is one and the same. Sex is one outlet for it, one direction for it; it is one of the applications of the energy. Life energy is one, but it can manifest in many directions. Sex is one of them. When life energy becomes biological, it becomes sex energy. Sex is just an application of the life energy. So there is no question of sublimation. If life energy flows in another direction, there is no sex. But it is not a sublimation; it is a transformation. Sex is the natural, biological flow of life energy, and the lowest application of it. It is natural because life cannot exist without it, and the lowest because it is the foundation not the peak. When sex becomes the totality, the whole life is just a waste. It is like laying a foundation and going…
Beloved Osho, this morning you talked about the inner intercourse and orgasm which happens between the outer male body and the inner female unconscious, and vice versa. Please explain how this happens in the active meditation we are practicing here.
And it is a good idea -- because if a man has remained for thirty years a man, it will be a good change. Really, to become a woman is to move into another world, and this is a greater change than going to the moon. There is nothing much there; it is just like the earth. But a man moving to be a woman or a woman becoming a man is moving to a completely opposite pole. Really, whenever the alternative becomes possible, only foolish people will not use it. Those who are wise will use it, because then you can become aware and you can live in two totally different worlds. That will give a new light to the human mind, because man has never really understood what woman is, neither are women capable of understanding men, because their psychologies differ so absolutely, they exist on such extreme…