According to Osho, there is no secret: obscenity in media flourishes because priests and moralists condemn and repress sexuality, turning the forbidden into irresistible. Repression breeds agitation, which seeks outlets in porn and vulgarity. When sex is accepted naturally and openly, curiosity loses its charge and such material withers. Prohibition is an invitation; remove the taboo, and the market for obscenity collapses.
Hide and shame sex, and people get obsessed and chase dirty media; accept it naturally, and the thrill — and the market — fade.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, it is astonishing that a porno magazine published from India’s capital, which trades in obscenity, has written that you should be hanged. What is the secret behind this?
Anand Maitreya! There is not the slightest secret. The matter is absolutely straight and clear. Pornographic magazines sell because of your sadhus and renunciates! If things were up to me, porn magazines wouldn’t be able to sell anywhere in the world. If things were up to me, who would buy a porn magazine? For what purpose? Who buys porn magazines? Those very people who have repressed their sexual desire. Those who have not honored their sexuality, not welcomed it. Those who have fallen prey to pundits, priests, sadhus and monks. They are the ones who read porn magazines—though some read them hidden inside the Gita, some inside the Quran, some bound in a Bible cover—but it’s the same people. This whole world is full of “religious” people—so who is reading porn? The very ones who read books saying “celibacy is life” are the ones who read porn. These are not…Read the full discourse →
You can see something very strange. Priests are against me and pornographers are against me, what does it mean? It means that, if sex repression disappears, who will be interested in pornography? The whole business will flop. So there seems to be an inner conspiracy, perhaps unconscious, between the priest and the pornographer -- that the priest creates the market and the pornographer reaps the crop. And what a beauty! The priest goes on condemning pornography, but the more he condemns it, the more people are looking at ugly, obscene pictures. But they have to hide them behind The Bible, behind the Gita, so if somebody suddenly turns up, they can close The Bible and the Gita and you never know what was hidden in them. When I was arrested in America -- when I entered the cell there was another inmate.Read the full discourse →
Osho, there is a great deal of hypocrisy in india about sex. People are not even willing to discuss it openly, yet there is a growing proliferation of, and obsession with, nude pictures. Will this flood of pornography help? Can it finally bring sex out into the open in india?
If you want to see the reality of the politician you will have to see him from his back door. There he is in his nudity, as he is, and so is the priest. These two kinds of cunning people have dominated humanity. And they found out very early on that if you want to dominate humanity, make it weak, make it feel guilty, make it feel unworthy. Destroy its dignity, take all glory away from it, humiliate it. And they have found such subtle ways of humiliation that they don't come in the picture at all. They leave it to you to humiliate yourself, to destroy yourself. They have taught you a kind of slow suicide. You ask me, Silvera: "There is a great deal of hypocrisy in India about sex." It is not only a question about sex. Sex is the most fundamental hypocrisy, but then there are…Read the full discourse →
What is pornography, and why does it have so much appeal?
Your alive wife does not give you any thrill. With your alive wife you suddenly go dead. There are people, even while making love to their wife, they are imagining some other woman; they are imagining some PLAYBOY picture. They can make love to their woman only when in their imagination there is some other woman, some fantasy. Then they get thrilled. They are not making love to their woman, and the woman is not making love to them. She may be thinking of some actor or some hero or somebody. There are four people in each bed! Of course, it is too crowded, and you never contact the real person; those imaginary ones are standing in between. You should know that masturbation -- mental or physicalis a perversion. It does not exist in nature. Homosexuality does not exist in nature, but in zoos it comes into existence. In zoos…Read the full discourse →
Several other friends have, in many forms, asked a second question in various ways. That too needs to be talked over with you. They have asked: Osho, is there any place in life for restraint, rules, celibacy? Because you never speak of them!
Man will create anew. If the mind demands, you cannot stop it. The works of great poets like Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti are full of eros—what will you do? Obscene to the core! Why has this entire sickness arisen—this literature, music, dance, painting, sculpture all clustering around sex? Because a basic error has occurred in man’s life. If a village is kept hungry for some days, do you know what they’ll dream of—women? No—bread, feasts, palaces where the king has invited them to dine. If a village is kept chronically hungry, what will its poets sing of—women? No—bread. The whole village will circle around bread; its consciousness will be seized by bread. The German poet Heine wrote: once I had to go hungry for three days. As long as my belly was full, the moon looked to me like my beloved’s face. After three days of hunger, the moon seemed like…Read the full discourse →