According to Osho, there is no future for morality concerning sex; that sex-obsessed morality is dead. Sex should be a playful, consensual, private celebration of energies, with society intervening only against coercion or harm. As sex loses moral centrality, ethics shifts to truth, authenticity, awareness, love, compassion, and meditation, letting sexual energy transform naturally toward higher consciousness without guilt or seriousness.
Sex shouldn't be a moral battlefield—if two people freely enjoy it without harming anyone, it's their business, while real goodness is about being honest, aware, loving, and kind.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: OSHO, WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF MORALITY CONCERNING SEX? Divendra, THERE IS NO FUTURE OF ANY MORALITY concerning sex. In fact, the very combination of sex and morality has poisoned the whole past of morality. Morality became so much sex-oriented that it lost all other dimensions -- which are far more important. Sex should not really be so much of a concern for moral thinking. Truth, sincerity, authenticity, totality -- these things should be the real concerns of morality. Consciousness, meditation, awareness, love, compassion -- these should be the real concerns of morality. But sex and morality became almost synonymous in the past; sex became overpowering, overwhelming. So whenever you say somebody is immoral you simply mean that something is wrong with his sexual life.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON SEXUAL ETHICS? My views on sexual ethics are against all the views that have been held up to now. They were all repressive of sex; they were condemnatory and created a split in the human mind. The whole schizophrenia and all the perversions of man are rooted in those wrong sexual ethics. I conceive of sex as a natural phenomenon. There is nothing profane in it and there is nothing sacred in it. It is purely natural life energy of tremendous importance. If you cannot sublimate it, it can destroy you; and it has destroyed humanity. It is the energy man is born out of; everything is born out of it. Naturally there is no higher energy than sexual energy, but biological reproduction is not its only function. The same energy can have different creative dimensions.
Osho, Alan Watts has pointed to the same spontaneity in Zen Buddhism. But the basic principles of morality rest on rules, prohibitions, inhibitions; by openly calling upon the youth to be naked, you are breaking these. Are you thereby accepting a kind of subtle immorality?
It is there, fully there. For thousands of years it has been lodged in our collective mind. Even what we release a little is never total. And that partial release creates tension, because half is released and half is pulled back. It is like a man driving a car with his foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time. What will happen to the car is what is happening to the mind. On one side he presses the accelerator—“the car should move”—on the other, his unconscious applies the brake. Nothing will come of it but breakdowns and accidents. Even the old condition was better—only the brake. The West had the opposite—only the accelerator. The new mind is caught in the turmoil between the two. My understanding is: the accelerator is worth pressing, and there is a right time to press it. The brake is also worth applying,…
So a great reverence has to be developed. That is the tantra vision: reverence for life, reverence for everything that life implies, particularly sex because it is sex that life comes out of. Each cell of the body is a sexual cell. The whole celebration around us is a sexual celebration. Flowers are sexual, the song of the bird is sexual and all that is beautiful is sexual. But the word 'sex' has become very very condemned. The moment you use the word something inside you becomes antagonistic; the very word has become loaded. I am not saying to force sex on yourself, but whenever it happens have a very very holy, full-of-reverence attitude towards it. The woman that you love, think of her as a goddess; think of her as a medium between you and god.
a friend has asked: Osho, the way you speak—won’t it spread immorality?
As though immorality weren’t already widespread, and now it will spread because of what I say. The situation is such that however much you try to spread it now, it would be very hard to make it go any further than it already has. They say, “Let immorality not spread.” Perhaps they think morality is what has spread. So they ask, “Won’t your words spread immorality?” This fear haunts us constantly. And it’s rather amusing—a funny kind of fear. Because it is immorality that has spread. If morality had spread, there would be no need for such fear. Even after ten thousand years of effort, morality hasn’t spread; it’s immorality that has. And now we’re afraid that immorality might spread! Our fear is like a beggar sitting nervously beside a police station worrying that he might be robbed. What is there of yours to be stolen? Roam freely! You don’t…