According to Osho, balance arises when you stop suppressing the senses yet refuse excess: be fully sensitive, enjoy sensuality as part of being alive, but don’t turn it into obsession. Suppression breeds later indulgence; awareness lets pleasure stay simple and sane. Choose the “right” middle—neither fasting nor feasting—so sensitivity flowers, sensuality remains natural, and aliveness doesn’t collapse into deadness or compulsion.
Feel everything fully but don’t overdo it—like enjoying some candy, not none and not the whole jar.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
You said that to be sensitive is to be religious. But it seems that sensitivity leads me to sensuality and indulgence. What is the way for me?
Then indulge! Then be sensual! Why are you so afraid of life? Why do you want to commit suicide? What is wrong with indulgence and what is wrong with being sensual? You have been taught so, and this is what I am saying. Then you become afraid of being sensitive because if you are sensitive, then everything will grow with sensitivity. Sensuality will grow -- it is beautiful, nothing is wrong with being sensual. An alive man will be sensual. What is the difference between a dead man and an alive man? The dead man is no longer sensual; you touch and he doesn't feel, you kiss and he doesn't respond. I have heard one anecdote about Picasso. A lady was appreciating Picasso's pictures and she said, 'Yesterday I went to a friend's house and there I saw your self portrait. And I loved it so much, and I was…
Kill out desire for sensation.... Learn from sensation and observe it, because only so can you commence the science of self-knowledge, and plant your foot on the first step of the ladder.
When you are looking at something -- a flower or a beautiful face or the stars -- become the eyes. Forget everything else, as if the whole rest of your body has gone out of existence and your consciousness has become just eyes. Then your eyes will be able to look more deeply, and you will become capable of looking at the invisible also. The invisible can also be seen, but you need more penetrating eyes to see it. KILL OUT ALL DESIRE FOR SENSATION, and grow in sensitivity. Think about the world less and about your senses more. Purify them. When you don't ask for sensations they become purified. When you ask for more and more sensations, you are killing your senses. The man who finds the divine is the man whose senses are totally alive. to their maximum capacity Then it is not only that you can see…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, A FEW DAYS AGO I WAS FEELING FULL OF ENERGY AND A LOT OF LOVE FOR MYSELF. THE OPPORTUNITY AROSE FOR ME TO LET MYSELF FACE MY NUMBER ONE DEVIL: JEALOUSY. I WENT FOR IT WHOLEHEARTEDLY, AND THE RESULT WAS TO SEND MYSELF EVEN HIGHER: I FELT EUPHORIC AND SO GRATEFUL. I AM STILL LEFT WITH AN ALMOST UNCONTAINABLE ENERGY WHICH SEEMS COMPOSED OF SENSUALITY AND OF LOVINGNESS. IF I GO INTO IT, I RISK HURTING OTHER PEOPLE; BUT THE ALTERNATIVE SEEMS A COMPROMISE. SITTING AND WATCHING IT DRIVES ME BANANAS! OSHO, MY MAIN QUESTION IS: WHAT IS IT THAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM THIS EXPERIENCE, AND HOW TO USE THIS SO AS NOT TO BE TAKEN OVER AGAIN BY JEALOUSY? HOW TO ENJOY THE FREEDOM TO EXPRESS SENSUALITY WITHOUT COMPROMISING, GETTING FRUSTRATED OR SLIPPING ON THE BANANA? And be sensuous.
Osho, please comment on the art of balanced living. Mr life is often an experience of extremes, with the middle road difficult to maintain for any length of time.
Masochists have always moved towards religion. Religion has a great attraction for masochists. In fact, so many masochists down the ages have moved towards religion -- it was very natural, that movement -- that religion became dominated by the masochists. That's why religion goes on insisting on being life-negative, life-destructive. It is not for life, it is not for love, it is not for joy. It goes on insisting that life is misery. By calling life misery, it rationalizes its own clinging to misery. I have heard a beautiful story -- I don't know how far it is correct, I cannot vouch for it: In paradise, one afternoon, in the most famous cafe, Lao Tzu, Confucius and Buddha are sitting, and talking sweet nothings. The bearer comes and in a tray brings three glasses of the juice called life and offers them. Buddha immediately closes his eyes and he says,…
Beloved Osho, you said be a total yea-sayer, be totally with the body. But it is our common experience that then there is every possibility of the senses being permissive and indulgent. Please explain the wisdom behind the above saying.
So let them be permissive and indulgent. Why be afraid? What is wrong in it? The fear comes from a long tradition of suppression. Why be afraid of your senses being permissive? Why not permit them? Who are you not to permit them and what has happened to you? Do you think that you have enslaved your senses? Quite the contrary is the case: your senses have enslaved you, and you cannot be free unless your senses are free. Unless your total being is free, you cannot be free. This is one of the deepest problems for the human mind. You will have to understand it. First you say something is wrong, then you become afraid of it. Then you try to suppress it, not to do it. And the more you suppress it, the more your mind is filled with it. For example, if you suppress sex then your…