According to Osho, sex is a fundamental truth of life that must be acknowledged, not denied. Priests and outdated psychology made people blind to sex, and repression turned humanity sex‑ridden and neurotic. Truth cannot be suppressed—what is pushed down explodes from the unconscious. He speaks about sex openly to end guilt and bring awareness, so energy can be consciously lived and transformed.
Face sex honestly instead of hiding it, so it stops secretly running your life.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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.
One of the controversial issues about the rajneesh ashram concerns indulgence in sex and what are being condemned as sexual perversions or orgies. We would like bhagwan rajneesh to give us his views on sex and its role in transcendence. -- r.k. Karanjia, editor, blitz
He's an atheist, a confirmed atheist who had never prayed. But with the situation -- the fear of the night and the wild animals -- for the first time in his life he thought of God. He forgot all his arguments that he used to give against God. He knelt down on the ground and he said, "Dear Lord...." although he looked around, a little embarrassed, knowing perfectly well that there was nobody, but still embarrassed -- the whole life's philosophy of atheism! But when fear knocks on the doors and when death is so close by, who bothers about logic, philosophies, isms? Who bothers about reason, argument? "Dear Lord," he said, "please help me get out of these woods, and I will always worship you. I will even start going to the mosque. I will follow all the rituals of Islam. I promise you! Just save me. Forgive me.…
Osho, in this country most of the opposition to you has gathered around your work and your ideas on sex. It’s understandable that priests protest; but the truth is that even educated people familiar with modern psychology hesitate to accept that kama and Ram are connected. Would you kindly give us clear guidance on this?
Modern psychology has gone far beyond Freud. It is coming closer to religion. It is beginning to suspect that man does not end with mind; there is something beyond—soul, and who knows, perhaps the divine. First glimpses are appearing, and new directions are opening. What is happening in this ashram is happening in no ashram in India. Around sixty therapeutic groups are running here. Leave aside India: nowhere in the world—not even in centers devoted to psychology—are sixty therapy groups running. Slowly, without fanfare, this ashram has become the world’s largest psychological center. That breeds jealousy, unease, pain. It’s not that no psychologist opposes me in the West; some do—ten percent perhaps. Not a large number. They are those afraid I am taking their clients. Patients they could not help for years come here and are healed by meditation within months. A very well‑known Dutch psychologist and writer, Deva Amrito—himself…
But we are not inclined to even try to understand sex. We have to summon immense courage even to talk about it in public. What kind of fear is it that plagues us, so that we are not prepared to understand the force out of which the whole world is born? What is this fear? Why does sex alarm us so? People were shocked when I spoke about sex at the first meeting last month, in Bombay. I received many angry letters asking me not to talk in this fashion, letters saying I should not speak on this subject at all. I wonder why one should not discuss this subject? When this urge is already inherent in us, why should we not talk about it? Unless we can understand its behavior, can analyze it, how can we hope to raise it to a higher plane?
You are also known as the sex guru. What do you presently think of love?
The definition which calls me a sex guru is not only false, it is absurd. To put it right: I am the only person in the whole world who is antisex. But that needs tremendous understanding. You cannot hope for that understanding from journalists. I have been talking about sex so that it can be transformed. All the religious teachers can be called sex gurus except me, because they are teaching repression of sex, which keeps a man continuously sexual; he will never be transformed. He will never go beyond sex. Repression is the way to keep you attached to whatever you have repressed. I have been teaching expression, so that you are getting rid of it by expressing it. You are not holding it back inside your unconscious. And the more you express your sexuality, with no guilt, with no sin -- because it is not a sin; it…