According to Osho, recurring sex dreams signal repressed sexuality: dreams mirror how you live. Suppressing sex breeds obsession and perversion, so the unconscious insists at night. The remedy isn’t denial but conscious acceptance, understanding, and meditation—working with nature, not against it. Respect sex as life energy; live harmoniously. As awareness deepens, repression dissolves, obsession fades, and even dreams subside into restful, often dreamless, sleep.
You dream of sex because you’re pushing those feelings down; accept and understand them with awareness, and through meditation the dreams will ease.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I always dream of sex and sex and sex -- why?
ARE YOU A FOLLOWER of Morarji Desai? Something is basically wrong with you. Your dreams simply show that you are living a repressed life. Your dreams reflect how you are living your life. Your dreams are not just dreams -- they are reflections. In the waking time you must be repressing sex; then, naturally, it is bound to assert itself in your dreams. Dreams only indicate that you are doing something wrong with your life. When your life is really harmonious, lived consciously, dreams disappear -- all kinds of dreams disappear. Your whole sleep becomes dreamless. That is the indication that the transformation is happening -- that happens to every meditator. As meditation goes deeper, dreams start disappearing. But dreams show something about you. And you have to rethink, you have to rearrange your life. If you are dreaming only of sex, that simply shows you are sex-obsessed. And who…
Beloved Osho, yesterday you discussed how to be without passion, how to go beyond passion. Please tell us the alchemy of being without passion, sex, even in dreams.
Try to understand this deep rule about the mind. The mind is like the root of the tree. If the roots are deep down in the earth then the tree goes on flourishing; new leaves, flowers and fruits go on sprouting. But if the roots are pulled out of that dark depth and put in the light then the tree dies. This is exactly what happens with the mind. Whatever may be the disease of the mind, bring it out in the light. Light is death for disease. But you do just the opposite. Your so-called religious gurus have been telling you just the opposite. They have been saying that you should suppress it so much that even the root cannot be seen. But the deeper the root, the more dangerous it is. Then your life will become poisonous. You should uncover yourself and bring it before your eyes. Do…
Osho, I have taken the vow to remain a celibate my whole life, but why do I still suffer from sexual thoughts, fantasies and dreams?
Just the last week I was reading about one yogi, Dhirendra Brahmachari, who goes on showing his yoga postures on the television. And he was telling the last week to his audience that, "Do you know how I remain so healthy? I am pulling my anus upwards right now, but you cannot see it because I am wearing clothes." And then he told that his disciple, one girl who sits by his side to show yoga postures, "She is also holding her anus upwards, but you cannot see because she is wearing the clothes." The girl must have gone red! It is good that India has not yet gone for color TV -- in black and white you cannot see whether the girl is blushing or not. But then you have to do all kinds of nonsense things. Now pulling your anus upwards will simply force your sexual energy to…
Osho, yesterday you said that when anger is watched consciously, it dissolves. But why is it that when sexual desire arises, even in awareness its intensity persists? Why is it so?
There is no entanglement in the breath. If you try to practice on anger… Anger is not happening every moment; it happens sometimes. And when it happens, it happens with such intensity that you are already going deep into it; so much is at stake in those moments that you may think, “We will look into awareness later; first let’s settle this now.” Lust is very deep, because existence has made it so deep; life depends on it. If lust were so easy that you decided and were freed, perhaps you would not even have been born—because many before you would have become free, and the possibility of your being would have been almost nil. But your parents, and their parents, did not become free; therefore you are. You too will not get free so easily, because your children are also to be—they are waiting: “Do not run away midway.”…
How did tantra grow out of buddhism which, as far as I know, views sex as a hindrance to meditation?
It depends on you whether you call them beautiful or horrible. In the night they are beautiful, in the morning they become horrible. In the night you enjoy them, in the morning you suffer. And there is a vicious circle created, and your so-called saint goes on moving in this vicious circle: the day he suffers, the night he enjoys, the day he suffers, the night he enjoys -- and he is torn between these two. And if you look deep down into yourself you will find it easily. Whatsoever you repress will remain there, you cannot get rid of it. The repressed remains, only the expressed disappears. The expressed evaporates, the repressed remains and not only remains, but it becomes more and more powerful. As time passes by, it becomes more and more powerful. Saraha must have looked at what had happened after two hundred years of Buddha --…