According to Osho, intimacy is an informal, living communion—a search for love rooted in honesty, vulnerability, and shared growth. It precedes any formality like marriage; otherwise marriage becomes a secure, dead arrangement. True intimacy invites real challenges, transparency about feelings and desires, and mutual maturation, not trivial fights or pretense. Choose relationships that expand awareness and courage, not those that keep you childish.
Intimacy means being truly open and real with each other so you both grow, not hiding behind a safe label like marriage.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
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 --…
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.
OSHO: Love is the most intoxicating phenomenon. It is the wine that wells up within. It is not something chemical that comes from the outside, it is not even part of the body, not part of the mind either. It is the dance of the heart in tune with the whole. Love is your heart in deep harmony with the heart of the universe. Then there is great intoxication. And yet the intoxication does not make you unconscious; on the contrary it makes you more conscious than ever. That's the paradox of love: on one hand one is intoxicated, on the other hand one has never been so aware before. It is an intoxication that makes you wake up. HER SIX-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER: PREM GARIMA, GLORY OF LOVE. NENE BECOMES MA PREM KUNDAN OSHO: It is by passing through the fire of love that one becomes one's real self.
But begin with pain, and always remember that everything has to begin in pain. Meditate together and open your hearts as they are. Sometimes wrong, sometimes rotten, sometimes not worth showing to anybody -- but at least to your beloved, you should show. In this way you will also help her to show everything. And when all the cards are open -- you are not even hiding a trump card -- intimacy arises on its own accord. What is intimacy? Intimacy is, 'Before you I will be absolutely nude. I will not hide anything.' That's all intimacy is. It is, 'When you are in the room, I will be as if I am alone.' Your presence will not make me repress something. Your presence will not make me change and show something else which is not there.