According to Osho, eroticism in art has two radically different roles: in the East (Khajuraho, Konarak, Ajanta), it’s a tantric, meditative device—erotic sculptures surround the temple exterior to expose and cathartically cleanse repressed sexuality, preparing one to enter inner silence. In the modern West, erotic imagery is pornography—stimulating sensuality without pointing beyond, thus deepening bondage rather than opening the door to transcendence.
Some erotic art was made to help people face and release hidden sexual tension so they can be peaceful inside, while much modern sexy imagery just stirs craving and doesn’t help you grow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, in the west, the portrayal of woman's body is used in films, books and magazines. This art form is known as `eroticism'. Through the sculptures of khajuraho and ajanta I have seen that a similar art form was there in the east. Can you talk about the difference between these two cultures in regard to the female body?
What is happening in the West is simply pornography, obscene. It does not help man to get rid of it, but simply gives him a temporary relief. The pornographic literature, photography, are all helping you to stay normal; otherwise, you will go mad. So I don't think there is any harm when somebody reads PLAYBOY hiding it inside the BIBLE. What he is seeing in a pornographic magazine brings up his own unconscious. This was used as a meditation technique in Khajuraho. In the West it is used to create more thirst for the same sexuality which has been aroused by the pornographic magazine, by blue films, by naked dances and striptease. The same method was used to transform your energy into spirituality. In the West it is used to provoke more sexuality, more sensuality. And then there is a kind of insatiation -- almost all painting has gone pornographic,…
A friend has asked one more thing in this regard. He asks: Osho, we cannot regard you as any authority, any authentic person, on sex. We came to ask you about God, and you started talking about sex. We came to hear about God. So please tell us about God!
A man was taken to a psychologist. He worked in an office, and he was very upset with his boss. Whatever the boss said felt like an insult, and he felt like taking off his shoe and hitting him. But how can you hit the boss with a shoe? Though it would be hard to find a servant who never thought, “Let me take off my shoe and hit him.” Such a servant is rare. If you are a boss, you know it; if you are an employee, you also know it—that being a servant hurts deeply, and one feels like taking revenge. But if the servant could take revenge, he wouldn’t be a servant. So the poor fellow keeps suppressing and suppressing. His condition became so bad that he feared, “Someday, in a fit, I may actually hit him.” So he started leaving his shoes at home. But all…
As far as Freud is concerned, I wish to explain to this particular friend that it is quite probable Freud was not aware of what I am telling you here. Freud was one of the few seers who guided mankind in the direction of sexual liberation, but he had no idea whatsoever that spiritual sex existed. The knowledge Freud systematized was that of sick sex; his research was with the pathological. Freud was a kind of doctor and his discoveries were used like treatments, doled out to sick people. Freud hadn't studied normal, healthy sex. He was a research scholar dealing in sickness, in perversion, and his mind was primarily set on treatment, on cure. Therefore, if you are bent on confirming the truthfulness of what I say, you will have to turn to the philosophy of Tantra.
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.…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON SEXUAL ETHICS? My own insight is that people came to discover meditation through sexual orgasm because of these qualities. They could see that when thoughts stop, time stops, ego disappears and you are in a tremendously beautiful space. Although it lasts only for seconds, it has given you the taste of something that is not of this world, something of the beyond. We don't know who discovered meditation, perhaps thousands of years ago. In the East we have books at least ten thousand years old describing methods of meditation. But any method brings the same qualities. This is my feeling, that without sexual orgasm nobody could have been able to discover these three qualities. Once they discovered these three qualities, people of intelligence must have tried to experience them without going into sexual orgasm.