According to Osho, sex and death are two poles of the same process. Because birth arises from sex, death is built into sexual life; without sex, as in amoeba’s division, there is no death. Traditions chasing immortality thus repress sex. Existentially, deep orgasm is a brief death of the ego—control drops, the non-voluntary takes over—revealing why both remain taboo and feared.
Sex starts life, so an ending is built in; in real sex your ‘me’ disappears for a moment like a tiny death, which is why we fear and hide both.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is the relationship between meditation and the unlearning process?
In the East just the totally different thing has happened. We cannot conceive of Buddha going mad. That would be the most impossible thing in the world: Buddha going mad. Nietzsche goes mad because Nietzsche is a thinker, Buddha CANNOT go mad because he is a NO-thinker; he drops thinking, how can he go mad? One day the whole crowd is gone and he is sitting alone, nobody to even disturb, so much alone that he is not even one, because who is there to say that you are one? If somebody is there to say that you are one, the other is still present. Meditation is unlearning. Peel your onion. It is difficult, because you have become identified with the onion, you think these layers are YOU so to peel them is difficult, it is painful also, because it is not like just throwing your clothes, rather it is…
Beloved master, sex and death seem to be the main attractions for me. What can you say about these poles to help me go beyond?
But sex... that is a danger for them. India is not a sex-oriented country. Kissing, hugging, love, the very phenomenon of love, makes you more earthbound, makes you less afraid of death. Lovers are the people who are the least afraid of death. When you are in love you don't care about death. If it comes, it comes. So what? If you are in love, you can die smilingly. With a kiss on your lips you can say goodbye. You loved, you lived; there is nothing to repent. Your life has not been a wastage. You bloomed! You danced in the sun, in the wind, in the rain -- what more can you expect? Immense was the gift of life: love was its gift. You are grateful! Why should you go to the priest? You may go to the poet, you may go to the painter, you may go to…
Osho, why am I so much afraid of two groups here, the tantra and the encounter?
You see the stupidity? You are making conditions for me. You are trying to bribe me -- as if being called "Bhagwan" by Geet Govind is going to give me something, as if I am interested in being called "Bhagwan" by Geet Govind, or as if his sannyas is something immensely valuable for my existence. Reading his letter I was reminded of T.S. Eliot's lines: We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! If you are afraid to face your sexuality -- which is the beginning of your life, which is the source of your life -- and if you are afraid to face your death and the fear that it creates -- which is going to be the end of your life -- you are nothing but a "hollow" man, a "stuffed" man, a "headpiece filled with straw. Alas!" You…
Question: Osho, A dervish was on a sea voyage. As per custom, all the passengers came to him one by one and asked for wise counsel. The dervish told everyone the same thing: “Keep awareness of death until you come to know death itself.” It was a dervish’s meditation aphorism. But it did not appeal to any of the travelers. A little later a terrible storm arose at sea. Panic swept the whole ship. The sailors and the passengers all fell to their knees and began praying to God to save the ship. Yet amid this terror the dervish sat unperturbed and serene. Then the sea, too, grew calm. A fellow traveler asked the dervish, “Did you not see that during that dreadful storm there was nothing between us and death but a plank?” “Yes, I knew,” the dervish replied, “that at sea it is always so.
Beloved Osho, I have had a strong feeling of sex and death over the last few weeks. Is it necessary that I understand why?
Man's orgasm is so quick that he cannot create the vaginal orgasm in that small period of time -- a few seconds. But if clitoral orgasm is created just as foreplay, it is creating a situation for the vaginal orgasm to happen. It has already started: the clitoral orgasm has triggered the process in the body. But men pay no attention to the clitoral orgasm, because their orgasm can happen easily only with vaginal contact. They are interested only in their own orgasm, and when they are finished they don't think about the woman at all. Lesbianism is spreading in the woman's liberation movement because it is giving them clitoral orgasm; but that is another stupidity because it is simply foreplay. It is as if you had the preface of the book but the book is missing. So you go on reading the preface as long as you want, again…