According to Osho, sexual energy, when repressed, disguises itself as devotional frenzy—rituals, songs, and dances—and keeps you unenlightened; rightly understood and allowed to transform through awareness, it becomes silent, radiant bliss. Real spirituality is not repression or pious sublimation but a shift of the same life-energy into consciousness, culminating in effortless peace beyond worship and belief.
Don’t push your feelings down or hide them in prayerful noise; gently watch them so the same energy turns into quiet happiness.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Please describe to us the spiritual significance of sex energy. How can we sublimate and spiritualize sex? Is it possible to have sex, to make love, as a meditation, as a jumping board toward higher levels of consciousness?
There is no such thing as sex energy. Energy is one and the same. Sex is one outlet for it, one direction for it; it is one of the applications of the energy. Life energy is one, but it can manifest in many directions. Sex is one of them. When life energy becomes biological, it becomes sex energy. Sex is just an application of the life energy. So there is no question of sublimation. If life energy flows in another direction, there is no sex. But it is not a sublimation; it is a transformation. Sex is the natural, biological flow of life energy, and the lowest application of it. It is natural because life cannot exist without it, and the lowest because it is the foundation not the peak. When sex becomes the totality, the whole life is just a waste. It is like laying a foundation and going…
No, Osho, what happens is that our mind is in one of two states. Either I feel I will be able to solve it, or I’m afraid that I won’t be able to solve it...
Because of that ignorance, we create many problems we don’t even suspect. For instance, in India almost everyone assumes that the sexual act is devastating. Physiologically that is absolutely wrong—completely wrong. In fact, sexual inactivity is devastating. Activity is not devastating. And it is also interesting that anyone who thinks he can go to extremes in sexual activity is mistaken. The body has checks. You cannot go to extremes; there are bodily checks. Nature has arranged it so you cannot expend surplus force beyond what the body allows. But one can misuse it, right? Even misuse is not possible—if you use full understanding. As far as sex has been understood, misuse is not possible. Misuse is impossible. Then not just sex—by that argument you can’t misuse anything! If we extend that very argument, you can’t misuse anything! No, no—you can misuse many things. Why not sex? Because the entire arrangement…
Beloved Osho, would you talk to us about using our sexual energy for growth, as it seems to be one of our main preoccupations in the west.
In a sexual orgasm you ARE. Being is there without any thinking. In this moment, if you can become alert, conscious, then sex can become the door towards the divine. And if in this moment you can become alert, that alertness can be carried in other moments also, in other experiences also. It can become a part of you. Then eating, walking, doing some work, you can carry that alertness. Through sex, the alertness has touched your deepest core. It has penetrated you. Now you can carry it. And, if you become meditative, you will come to realize a new fact. That fact is that it is not sex that gives you bliss, it is not sex that gives you the ecstasy. Rather, it is a thoughtless state of the mind and total involvement in the act that gives you a blissful feeling. Once you understand this then sex will…
Beloved Osho, what is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?
Whether you are for it or against it doesn't matter -- your concern shows where your ego is hanging. And I will include the capitalist in it also: his whole concern is how to gather money, hoard money -- because money has power over matter. You can purchase any material thing through money. You cannot purchase anything spiritual, you cannot purchase anything that has any intrinsic value; you can purchase only things. If you want to purchase love, you cannot purchase; but you can purchase sex. Sex is the material part of love. Through money, matter can be purchased, possessed. Now you will be surprised: I include the communist and the capitalist both in the same category, and they are enemies, just as I include Charvaka and Mahatma Gandhi in the same category, and they are enemies. They are enemies, but their concern is the same. The capitalist is trying…
Osho, human beings either go to the excess of sexual indulgence or to the opposite extreme of the frustration born of sexual repression. What is Sahaj Yoga’s vision on this subject—please be kind enough to explain it to us.
The Taj Mahal is the imagination of Sufi fakirs. An emperor had it built, but the conception was given by Sufis. Those who built it were Sufi fakirs too. That’s why, if you sit silently and look at the Taj on a full-moon night for an hour or two, an unparalleled meditation descends. The signatures of Sufis are upon it. Its very form is such that it dissolves you into meditation. Millions of statues of Buddha were made—who made them? Not shopkeepers. Not mere technicians either. Such images of Buddha were made that if you just sit by them—stone, yes, but they poured so much into the stone; gave it such a form, such a hue, such a feeling—that even sitting near the stone something within you becomes still. In China there is a temple—the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas. It took centuries. Monks kept making, kept making, kept making.…