According to Osho, adultery is not the natural desire you feel for your own partner; calling that adultery is repressive nonsense. He contrasts this with Jesus’ point that lusting after another woman is already inner adultery, highlighting the mind’s role. Sex is beautiful when accepted naturally; both repression and indulgence distort it into ugliness.
Liking your spouse is normal; the real cheating begins in the mind when you secretly crave others.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, pope john paul has stated recently that if a man looked lustfully even at the woman who is his wife he could likewise commit adultery in his heart. What do you say about it?
For centuries this male chauvinistic attitude has prevailed. In India the so-called saints go on saying that the woman is the door of hell, but they don't say the same thing about men. They go on condemning the women, but they never say anything about the men. If the woman infatuates man, then the man infatuates the woman. But even your saints are not true sages -- they are male chauvinistic pigs! Otherwise man and woman are two aspects of the same humanity; they require the same respect. But the whole past has been condemnatory about women. It only shows one thing, nothing else: that your saints were deep down afraid of women, hence they were creating all kinds of barriers around themselves, that "the woman is the door to hell." They were trying to convince themselves that the woman consists only of bones and blood and pus and mucus.…
A friend has asked, Osho, in bhakti-yoga you have given love a fundamental place. I don’t know whether we ordinary people are familiar with love or only with lust! What is the difference between the two? And can lust become love?
It is worth asking, and worth understanding. Because we take lust to be love. And lust is not love; it can become love. In lust there is the possibility of love. But lust itself is not love; it is only a seed. If rightly used, it can sprout—but a seed is not a tree. So the one who becomes satisfied with lust, or concludes, “This is the end,” will never even come to know what love is. Lust can become love. Lust means attraction between two bodies—between bodies. Love means attraction between two minds. And devotion means attraction between two souls. They are all attractions, but on three planes. When one body is drawn to another body, that is kama, sex. When one mind is drawn to another mind, that is prem, love. And when one soul is drawn to another soul, that is bhakti, devotion. We live on the…
In this same context, someone has asked: Osho, what is your view regarding lust?
Lust is energy, and whoever fights with the energy of lust will be destroyed. Lust is to be transformed, not fought with. Sex, when transformed, becomes brahmacharya. Sex is not the opposite of brahmacharya. Brahmacharya is the transformed state of sex itself. In this world no energies are destroyed—only transformation happens. In this world nothing is destroyed; only transformation happens. Energies are never annihilated. The very energy of hatred, when transformed, becomes love. The very energy of cruelty, when transformed, becomes kindness and compassion. What you are calling lust—those very urges, when transformed, become forces that move life toward truth. After all, you must have seen: just now, on my way here, I passed a place where flowers were blooming. You must have seen a garbage heap where filth lies piled up. From that filth a stench arises, a bad odor spreads; anyone passing by holds his nose. But if…
Question: The third question: Osho, what is lust and what is prayer? In my vision, they are the two ends of the same ladder—like seed and tree, like egg and hen. One day lust grows wings and becomes prayer. Lust is prayer in the process of being born. Lust is groping in the dark for the way to become prayer. Lust is the wandering, the search for the path, the quest for the door. Therefore I have no condemnation of lust. In fact, I have no condemnation at all—of anything. In me there is a total acceptance, because I see: when everything is accepted by God, to reject anything is to reject God. I have heard this: The Sufi fakir Bayazid was very troubled by a neighbor. For a whole year that man lived next door and was a great nuisance.
Osho, you say you want to show india "love," yet most indians who come here, when faced with love, see it only as lust. What should be done about it?
The most important thing in the Indian mind is sex. Hence every day so many rapes happen, and no woman is safe walking on a street. How many sannyasins have written to me, particularly women sannyasins, saying, "Is it not our right to walk alone under the stars in the sky? Are we not human beings? Don't we have such a simple human right?" But in India it is impossible. Just the other day a young woman sannyasin was attacked by four Indians. Of course she screamed, and some sannyasins reached in time; otherwise they were going to rape her -- they had torn her dress apart. And this is not just one accident, it has been happening every once in a while for almost six years. The Indian mind is so sexually repressed that it cannot love, it can only lust. And once the lust is there you start…