What is the connection between laughter and sex?

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN LAUGHTER AND SEX? Anand Devopama, there is certainly a connection; the connection is simple. Sexual orgasms and laughter happen in the same way; their process is similar. In sexual orgasm you go on reaching a climax of tension. You are coming closer and closer to burst forth, and then at the peak, suddenly, the orgasmic release happens. After such a mounting tension, everything suddenly relaxes. The contrast between the mounting tension and the relaxation is so vast that you feel as if you have fallen into a calm, quiet ocean -- a deep relaxation, a deep let-go. That's why nobody has ever been known to have died from a heart attack while making love. This is strange, because love-making is an arduous exercise! It is great yoga! But nobody has ever died for the simple reason that it brings such relaxation.

Question: BELOVED OSHO, DOES LAUGHTER BELONG TO EVERY STAGE? Now try to understand the mechanism of laughter, how it happens. If I tell a joke, why do you laugh? What happens? What is the inner mechanism? If I tell a joke, expectation is created, you start expecting. Your mind starts searching for what the end is going to be, and you cannot conceive the end. A joke moves in two dimensions: first it moves in a logical dimension, you can conceive it. If the joke goes on being logical to the very end there will be no laughter. Suddenly the joke takes a turn and becomes illogical, something which you could not conceive. And when the joke takes a turn and the result becomes illogical, the expectation, the tension that was created in you, suddenly explodes. You relax, laughter comes out of you.

Beloved Osho, could you speak to us on laughter, its meditative powers, its chemistry on the brain, its power of transformation and healing... Its relation to silence, the gap, clarity, vision... Its contagiousness, its relation to different emotions... On homo ridens -- the essential human condition, on how to recognize true, authentic laughter from hysterical, exhibitionist, or hypocritical laughter, on how to be a channel of pure joy?

As mind disappears and leaves behind a silence, a space of meditation, your vision about everything that you do is completely different. If you are a painter you will paint something not with the mind, but with the clarity that your painting will give health, insight, peace, silence, to anyone who will just look at it. In this sense we are more primitive than people like Mozart or Beethoven. Our music is very poor, because our music is simply clumsy; it does not create any spiritual peace, it does not give any meditative silence; more often it is sexual. It functions on your sex center. It makes you closer to the animal rather than closer to the buddha. Classical music takes you very high, beyond your reach; perhaps you would not have been able to reach alone. Just listening to that music and you have gone for a new journey,…

"A joke moves in two dimensions. First it moves in a logical dimension. You can conceive it. If the joke goes on logically to the very end, it will cease to be a joke; there will be no laughter. So suddenly the joke takes a turn and becomes so illogical that you cannot conceive it. And when the joke takes a turn and the result becomes illogical; then the expectation, the tension that was created in you, suddenly explodes. You relax. Laughter comes out. "Laughter is the relaxation. But tension is first needed. A story creates expectation, suspense and tension. You start feeling the crescendo. Now the crescendo will come. Something is going to happen. Your backbone is straight like that of a yogi. You have no more thoughts in the mind. The whole being is just waiting. All the energy is moving toward the conclusion.

Beloved Osho, when I heard you say laughter is a small release from our misery, my mind would not compute. It felt as though hysteria was filling the room as we all laughed, and I am still asking myself, "what happened?"

You can see what happened! It can look like hysteria. For example, when you understand something and laughter happens as a relief from misery, a great energy is released. Every understanding releases accumulated energies in you. For example, you are not laughing the whole day -- only once in a while. You are not being loving the whole day -- only once in a while. What happens to the energy in the big gaps? It accumulates, and if you come to an understanding of a certain phenomenon there is a great release, and the release is so strong that it will feel hysterical. But it is not hysterical; it is really getting relief from energy which could have become hysterical any moment. You can find people in madhouses laughing for hours, laughing so much that tears come to their eyes. They are mad because they could not manage to release…