According to Osho, spontaneous celibacy is the natural absence of sexual craving that arises from deep understanding and awareness of sex—not from suppression, fear, or strategies to escape death. Forced celibacy only drives sexuality into the unconscious, breeding obsession and pornography. True celibacy flowers by insight: you honor sex as a profound mystery, explore it consciously, and, if desire falls away, it happens on its own.
You don’t quit sex by force; you understand it so deeply that, if interest fades, it fades naturally.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
As sex is closely related to death, what is the meaning of spontaneous celibacy?
Sex is more closely related to birth than to death. Birth is out of sex; birth is a sexual phenomenon. Naturally, sex is also closely related to death -- but as a by-product. Because birth is out of sex, death is also going to be out of sex. Hence the nonsensical idea arose in the East that if you remain celibate, if you remain a BRAHMACHARY, if you go beyond sex, you will never die -- you will become an immortal. That is foolish, because death is not something that is going to happen in the future, it has already happened with birth. You cannot avoid it. You can indulge in sex or you can indulge in celibacy, it is going to make no difference. Mulla Nasrudin had completed his hundredth year, and a few journalists came to interview him. He was the first citizen of his town who had…
Question: OSHO, I WANT TO BE A CELIBATE, A PERFECT BRAHMACHARIN. There are spiders... while making love the female spider starts eating the lover. He is making love, he is on top of her, and she starts eating him. Women are dangerous! And she starts eating from his head; first she eats the head because then he cannot escape. But he goes on making love -- the head is gone, but who needs head? When it is a question of lovemaking, who needs head? -- head is gone; slowly slowly his other parts start going, but he goes on making love. Whatsoever remains goes on quivering. That species' male spider makes love only once. Some love! Some totality! Some wholeness! Holy spider! The experiments that Skinner has done about this have proved that it can be dangerous, because on rats they have tried -- then rats stop doing everything.
The buddha said: "o monks, you should not see women. (if you should have to see them), refrain from talking to them. (if you should have to talk), you should reflect in a right spirit: 'I am now a homeless mendicant. In the world of sin I must behave myself like unto the lotus-flower whose purity is not defiled by the mud. Old ones I will treat as my mother; elderly ones as elder sisters; younger ones as younger sisters; and little ones as daughters.' and in all this you should harbour no evil thoughts, but think of salvation."
THE BUDDHA SAID: "THOSE WHO WALK IN THE WAY SHOULD AVOID SENSUALISM AS THOSE WHO CARRY HAY WOULD AVOID COMING NEAR THE FIRE." HINAYANA turns you from looking outside. It says: Close your eyes to the outside. MAHAYANA makes you more alert and aware, fills your inner chamber with more light, so that you can see the inner woman. And VAJRAYANA makes it possible for you so that you can have an inner orgasm with your man inside or your woman inside. That INNER orgasm will satisfy you, nothing else. These three steps are of tremendous meaning. SO DON'T BE WORRIED ABOUT THESE SUTRAS that we will be discussing today. Just two days before, one woman sannyasin wrote to me, "Osho, what is happening to me? When you were talking about Hassids I was so flowering, so floating with it -- each talk -- and I would go happy and…
It is understood that in the past, many schools of yoga taught mainly through suppression. And quite a few did attain through it. Is it not possible that even today, the technique of suppression may suit a certain type of person?
When sex desire arises, one simply pays total attention to it, not judging, not saying this is good or bad not saying this is evil, not saying that this is a provocation from the devil. No -- no evaluation at all because all valuation belongs to the mind and witnessing is not of the mind. Good, bad -- distinctions all belong to the mind, and the witnessing is undivided, one. It is neither good nor bad, it simply is. One pays attention to hunger or to the sex desire, total attention -- and total attention is such an energy, it is fire-the hunger simply is burned, the sex desire is simply burned. What happens? What is the mechanism inside? You feel hunger. In fact, you have never been hungry. The body has been hungry, you have never been hungry. But you are identified with the body that, "I am the…
Osho, I am a thirty-five-year-old celibate since boyhood—unbroken! But for some time now, whenever I sit for practice, women suddenly appear all around! Osho, does Indra want to break my austerities?
But the man who ran away into the forest couldn’t even do that—there were no women there to blame. Then nets of imagination arose within. The tide of sexuality he had suppressed in himself began to thrash, to assert, to surge into dreams. Psychologists say that if you live in solitude for three weeks and suppress any one thing, then after three weeks you will begin to dream with open eyes while awake. This is a psychological truth, verified by experiment. What you see at night with closed eyes in sleep, you begin to see in the day with open eyes—so palpably that it appears right in front of you. Hallucinations arise. And this is not a matter of three days. Atmanand Brahmachari, you say, “I am a thirty-five-year-old celibate since boyhood.” If for thirty-five years you have been imposing celibacy upon yourself, it’s no surprise if women begin to…