According to Osho, tantra regards sexuality as a natural, powerful doorway: you neither condemn nor repress it, you enter it with awareness and love, passing through its depths to go beyond it into meditation and spiritual awakening. Repression breeds neurosis; indulgence without consciousness is blind. Tantra uses sex as transformative energy, a bridge from instinct to transcendence, not an end in itself.
Tantra says sex isn’t bad or the goal—it’s a door you walk through carefully to find a quieter, wiser place inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
At the start of sexual union keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and so continuing, avoid the embers in the end.
WHEN IN SUCH EMBRACE YOUR SENSES ARE SHAKEN AS LEAVES, ENTER THIS SHAKING. EVEN REMEMBERING UNION, WITHOUT THE EMBRACE, TRANSFORMATION. ON JOYOUSLY SEEING A LONG ABSENT FRIEND, PERMEATE THIS JOY. WHEN EATING OR DRINKING, BECOME THE TASTE OF FOOD OR DRINK, AND BE FILLED. Once you know this, even the partner is not needed. You can simply remember the act and enter into it. But first you must have the feeling. If you know the feeling, you can enter into the act without the partner. This is a little difficult, but it happens. And unless it happens, you go on being dependent, a dependency is created. For so many reasons it happens. If you have had the feeling, if you have known the moment when you were not there but only a vibrating energy had become one and there was a circle with the partner, in that moment there was…
What is tantric sex? After 'monkey sex' and after 'love-bliss sex', before the highest cosmic and religious sex in which no partner is needed, in which the cosmos is the partner, isn't there tantric sex in which two partners are involved, a sex act which is a meditation based on certain techniques?
Many things will happen to the world. First, wars will become impossible. 'There will be no Vietnams and no Israels, because people will never accumulate so much anger in them that they have to kill, and kill millions. Many things will happen to the world if people are natural. Then they will not shout so much as you think they will shout. Right now they are allowed to shout they will shout -- but for how long? If they are given complete freedom, shouts and abusing and condemnation and fights will start disappearing from the world. It is a vicious circle. It is as if you have been starving a person and you don't allow him to go close to the fridge. And you say 'If we allow him he will eat too much. ' And you have been starving him -- and now you are afraid if you allow…
Verse (Sanskrit): ओशो, काम-ऊर्जा को ध्यान व समाधि की दिशा में रूपांतरित करने की साधना में तंत्र का क्या-क्या योगदान है? कृपया इसकी रूप-रेखा प्रस्तुत करें। Transliteration: ośo, kāma-ūrjā ko dhyāna va samādhi kī diśā meṃ rūpāṃtarita karane kī sādhanā meṃ taṃtra kā kyā-kyā yogadāna hai? kṛpayā isakī rūpa-rekhā prastuta kareṃ| Translation: Osho, in the sadhana of transmuting sex-energy toward meditation and samadhi, what are Tantra’s contributions? Please present its outline. Tantra is nondual. It accepts the One alone. That which is called evil is also a form of that One. That which is called inauspicious is also a form of that One. In Tantra’s mind there is no condemnation of anyone—condemnation simply is not. G. N. M. Tyrrell has written a book: “Grades of Significance.” In the Tantric vision the differences in life are differences only in degrees of significance.
Isn't tantra a way of indulgence?
But Tantra is not indulgence at all. The repressive people have always thought that Tantra is indulgence; their minds are so much obsessed. For example: a man who goes to a monastery and lives there without ever seeing a woman, how can he believe that Saraha is not indulging when he lives with a woman? Not only lives but practises strange things: sitting before the woman naked, the woman is naked, and he goes on watching the woman; or even while making love to the woman he goes on watching. Now, you cannot watch his watching; you can see only that he is making love to a woman. And if you are repressive, your whole repressed sexuality will bubble up. You must start going mad! And you will project all that you have repressed in yourself on Saraha -- and Saraha is not doing anything like that; he is moving…
Last night you discussed the attitude of total acceptance as the basic ground for all tantric sadhana -- spiritual practice. If I remember correctly, on another day you said that the science of tantra teaches to be in the middle in everything, being free from the extremes in life. In this reference, explain how one can come to understand the difference between indulgence and repression in one's sex life."
So now try tantra. Tantra says, do not fight; no one ever changes with fight. Accept! Then there is no question of what is indulgence and what is repression, and what is brahmacharya and what is this and that. There is no question then! Whatsoever is, you accept it and flow with it. You dissolve your ego resistance, you relax into the existence and go wherever it leads. If the destiny of the existence is that you are meant to be an animal, then, says tantra, be an animal. What will happen out of it and how does it happen? Tantra says, total transformation happens - because once you accept, the inner division dissolves, you become one. Then there are not two in you - the saint and the animal, the saint repressing the animal and the animal throwing the saint aside every moment. Then there is no two in…