Osho says don’t judge; see homosexuality as shaped by society, and focus on growing awareness and love beyond labels.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why are the boys in the muslim heaven so much more nauseating than the golden apsaras without any perspiration, of the hindu paradise? Your condemnation of homosexuality, not only in this lecture, doesn't seem very compassionate.
Each child born is masturbatory, because the child first learns to love himself. That is the only natural way. He knows nobody else, he plays with his own body. each child born is naturally masturbatory: that is his first love. The second stage of his growth is, he becomes homosexual -- naturally so. He has loved himself: if he is a boy, certainly he starts loving other boys -- his love is spreading. Girls are very far away, a totally different kind of animal. He loves himself -- it is easier for him to love other boys. A girl loves herself -- it is easier for her to love other girls; the boys are a world apart. This is the second step, NATURAL step: masturbatory, then homosexuality. Then the third thing, the third wave, is when you start loving the other -- the opposite. Man and woman are polarities, and…
Question: OSHO, I AM HOMOSEXUAL. WHAT SHOULD I DO ABOUT IT? My fundamental principle is acceptance -- tathata. Whatsoever is the situation, you accept it. From there things can begin. Don't reject it. It is out of rejection that the problem has arisen, so only with acceptance... Relax into it and you will be surprised. If you can accept it without any guilt, slowly slowly your homosexuality will turn into heterosexuality again. Why? -- because guilt is also a religious phenomenon, and homosexuality too. They are joined together, they are tied together. If you go on feeling guilty, you will remain homosexual. Drop the guilt, accept it. Nothing is wrong, just you are carrying the whole ugly past of humanity. What can you do? You have come a little late, people have preceded before. They have dirtied the whole beach. So we have to clean it.
You have been talking a lot about sex, which is good, because it has been for such a long tin1e kept in the dark. However, I have personally never heard you talk about homosexuality; only very, very briefly, and actually always to put it down. Please would you talk about it, because no matter what is the cause of "this perverted act," as you describe it, homosexuality did and does exist in the world. Can't the moon side meet the sun side in whatever body? Is tantra only for heterosexual people? Should people repress their homosexual tendencies?
I am not against anything, but I will not help you to cling to any place. Go on, go on, never cling to any place. I am not condemning anything. Use that opportunity, but go on. A few anecdotes: An obviously distressed gent staggered into a psychiatrist's office and said, "Doctor, you have got to help me. Every night I dream I am marooned on a desert island with a dozen blondes, a dozen brunettes, and a dozen redheads, each more beautiful than all the rest." "You must be the luckiest man alive," said the doctor. "What do you need my help for?" "My problem," said the patient, "is that in my dreams I am a man." You get it? Otherwise let me tell you another joke. Two retired army colonels were talking in their club. "Did you hear about old Carstairs?" asked one. "No, what about him?" said the…
Osho, you yourself have said there is no way to go against nature in any direction. Then whether, in the ocean of nature, we float or swim—whether we live in friendship with it or in enmity—where does any violation of nature occur? Yet you also explain: move in harmony with nature; in its river don’t swim, float. Osho, in this context, what is the alchemy of “nahin Ram bin thav”—there is no resting place without Ram? Please help us understand.
There is no way to be against nature, because there is nothing that is not nature. Whatever is, is nature. There is no path to fight with nature—who would fight? There is none other than nature. But the feeling, the idea, the vision that “I am fighting nature” can be adopted, it can be cultivated. When you swim in the river, you still are not going against nature, because swimming too is natural. Even when you “fight” the river, the river is not fighting you. So there is no way to be an enemy of nature. But in your mind the notion can arise that you are fighting, that you must win, must not lose—and you can fall into the madness of winning and losing. You will suffer from that. Nature suffers nothing. Nor will nature obstruct you or demand you change. Nature will go on as it is, endlessly.…
Beloved master, I am homosexual. I feel terribly oppressed and stricken by the stigma of homosexuality. It seems false to me to come here to find a way to come closer to myself and at the same time not to have the courage to show myself the way I am. Then I want to resign and return home so that I don't have to think about it any longer. What can I do?
You meditate -- homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual.... You meditate. You become more still and more silent. You create inner emptiness. You become more transparent, and then things will start changing. You will be able to see what you are doing to yourself. If it is right you will go on doing it with more joy, with more totality, with more intensity, with more passion. If it is wrong it will simply drop, just like dead leaves falling from a tree. So I cannot suggest any specific method because to me all the problems are arising because we have become minds and we have forgotten that deep down there is a space within us which can be called no-mind. Entering that space, no-mind, will give you perspective, vision, clarity. Meditate. Sit silently watching your thoughts -- homosexual, heterosexual, whatsoever they are, it doesn't matter. You watch, you become the witness. Slowly slowly,…