If someone keeps asking about sex with family, it likely shows their own issue; Osho stayed quiet to protect them, and says it’s unhealthy for children for scientific—not moral—reasons.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
He has asked this question so many times that I suspect: do you want to have sexual relations with your mother or with your daughter—who is it? Why are you asking this so many times? And this is the very question for which he has brought you to Poona! Then surely it must be a private, personal matter. With whom do you want sexual relations—your mother or your daughter? Why not ask it straight? Why try to give it such a philosophical color? At the very least, one should be honest in one’s questions.
A mother–son relationship or a father–daughter relationship is unscientific. Children born of it will be deformed, crippled, impaired, dull. This has nothing to do with religion. People have known this truth for centuries; science has only recently established it scientifically. A brother–sister relationship is also unscientific. This is not about morality—it's a simple fact that the sperm and ovum of close relatives are so similar that there is no tension, no pull between them. The person born will be a dud—without inner tension, without energy. The more distant the kinship, the more likely the child will be beautiful, healthy, strong, intelligent. That is why care has been taken that brother and sister do not marry; distant relations were sought, with no common gotra and no shared lineage for three, four, five generations. The farther the distance between the mother’s ovum and the father’s sperm, the greater the individuality that emerges…
Beloved Osho, you have pointed out that in dreams we often live out the content of the unconscious in a symbolic form. For example, the wish for a love affair with one's sister is played out in the dream as a love affair with her best friend. In this situation, who is doing the censoring and why?
And if the suggestion is such as making love to your sister or your mother -- which is one of the greatest sins in every society, the biggest taboo -- the mind will immediately disturb the whole thing. The consciousness will disappear, the hypnotist will disappear immediately, and the person will be awake, fully awake, and will be angry at you that you wanted him to do something which is not right. So it is the conscious mind... but conscious mind, unconscious mind, these are just arbitrary divisions. There are not really walls between them, that they cannot cross each other. There are no divisions, these are just lines on the map. They are all one piece, just one part has become conscious; the other part has not become conscious -- but they are joined. So even in dreams there is a censor. And all your dreams, unless they are…
Osho, do you feel that a child should be given the freedom to inquire about the facts of his birth and about sex?
The ignorance of our society and the traditional foolishness of parents is what spoils children. It is not obvious to us on the surface, because when children create such messes we want to make our old rules even stricter: “Look, everything is going wrong—tighten the old rules.” And we do not see that it is because of those very rules that the mess is happening. Make them stricter and the disorder will only increase. I want to give unconditional freedom to the whole of life. No one has the right to stop anyone. But freedom is not license. And the curious thing is: a free person is never licentious; only the dependent person becomes licentious. Dependence unnerves so much that dependence is one extreme. When the dependent man gets a chance, the other extreme is his licentiousness. He never pauses in the middle, where freedom is. If you lock a…
A friend has asked: I said that the transformation of sex becomes love. So he asks, Osho, a mother’s love for her son—Is that also sex? Is that also kama?
Others have asked similar questions. It will be useful to understand this a little. If you have listened carefully, I said that the experience of sex has depths most people never reach. Let me tell you: there are three levels to the experience of sex. - One level is the body—the purely physiological. A man goes to a prostitute. The experience of sex he has there cannot go deeper than the body. A prostitute can sell her body; the mind cannot be sold. And there is no way to sell the soul. The body can be obtained. A man commits rape: even in rape, neither the other’s mind nor soul is involved. You can violate a body; no one has found a way—and no one can—to violate the soul. So even the experience there remains at the level of the body. The primary experience of sex does not go deeper…
Beloved Osho, when you were talking about sex and meditation the other evening I got mixed up. So often before I have heard you say: "let your sex be your meditation." also, how do your latest suggestions fit into 'the tantra visions'? Please comment, beloved Osho, I am puzzled.
But I will not tolerate anybody here in the commune behaving as if he owns the space. If ever again I get any letter like this, you will be turned out of the door. Whoever he is -- because he seems to be very tricky -- one letter he writes which is absolutely ugly, then another letter he writes praising me, and great poetry and great gratefulness... this Italian spaghetti cunningness will not do here! Dhyan Smita, you are saying, "When you were talking about sex and meditation the other evening I got mixed up." The statement looks as if you were trying to do what I had said before; otherwise, why should you get mixed up? What got mixed up? -- sex and meditation? What got mixed up? Just one thought that you had heard before and another thought that you have heard now -- only two thoughts. But…