According to Osho, you keep repressing sex because a lifetime of conditioning—'sex is dirty, sex is sin'—has sunk into your conscience, body, and chemistry. Your new insight is only intellectual; the old hypnosis is heavier. Healing requires existential acceptance: honor sex as natural and divine, drop conditioning slowly, express it lovingly, and let that energy transform into awareness rather than mutate into neurosis.
You still push sex away because you were taught from birth it’s bad; your mind knows better now, but your body and habits need time and loving acceptance to unlearn.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I know that sex repression is the root cause of all neurosis, but then why do I go on repressing it?
YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT to do it from the very beginning. It has become part of you, your conscience. Listening to me now you understand that sex repression is the root cause of all neurosis, but this understanding is very new. And 'sex is dirty', and 'sex is sin', is very old, it may be fifty years old. And this understanding is very new. The weight of the old is too much. So you understand intellectually that sex repression is the root cause of all neurosis, but deep down, even in your body, even in your chemistry, the idea has penetrated, from the very moment you were given milk, you have been poisoned about sex, that it is sin. It is such a long long hypnosis that it will take time for you to be awake. It is a good beginning that an intellectual understanding Is happening, but it is…
No, Osho, what happens is that our mind is in one of two states. Either I feel I will be able to solve it, or I’m afraid that I won’t be able to solve it...
Because of that ignorance, we create many problems we don’t even suspect. For instance, in India almost everyone assumes that the sexual act is devastating. Physiologically that is absolutely wrong—completely wrong. In fact, sexual inactivity is devastating. Activity is not devastating. And it is also interesting that anyone who thinks he can go to extremes in sexual activity is mistaken. The body has checks. You cannot go to extremes; there are bodily checks. Nature has arranged it so you cannot expend surplus force beyond what the body allows. But one can misuse it, right? Even misuse is not possible—if you use full understanding. As far as sex has been understood, misuse is not possible. Misuse is impossible. Then not just sex—by that argument you can’t misuse anything! If we extend that very argument, you can’t misuse anything! No, no—you can misuse many things. Why not sex? Because the entire arrangement…
Question: Third question: Osho, I want to voice the pain of my heart, which I have never expressed to anyone till today. My mind has become fragmented. On one side there is love for satsang and the longing to meet the Divine, and on the other side a constant pull, every moment, toward physical sexual desire. Even into mature age I have not been able to be free of it. Understanding comes but remains incomplete. And despite many experiences of the female body, the tendency torments me even more. All the good sayings and teachings remain outside. I stay the same! Forgetting everything, I become greedy. Lust surrounds the mind. Even in dreams the same thing goes on. By what practice may I gain freedom or equanimity? Please show the way. Have compassion. Radharamana! Reflect on what I have just said. Why do you want to be free of it?
Osho, we find that our tendencies are stronger than our understanding. When watched with awareness, the waves of hatred, jealousy, anger—all these tendencies—seem to rise from the navel center. The witnessing and the rising of the wave happen together. Please tell us why these waves arise from the navel center. Is the unconscious related to the navel center? And is there a large accumulation of these tendencies in the unconscious, or are they produced moment to moment?
The stream of consciousness itself is not divided. The split into conscious and unconscious exists because of repression. First understand this well. A child is born with consciousness one and undivided. There is neither a conscious mind nor an unconscious mind—no such two parts. But soon the division starts, because we teach the child what is right and what is wrong; what is auspicious and what is inauspicious; what to do and what not to do. And all that we brand as “don’t,” “bad”—what will the child do with it? Calling something bad does not destroy it. We say anger is bad. The child hears and understands—but anger doesn’t vanish just because we label it bad, because anger is natural. The child has not learned anger; he is born with it, just as he is born with a body, with eyes and hands. And existence uses anger: anger is energy.…
I want to attain to brahmacharya and purity of life but whenever I sit silently sexual fantasies start crowding upon me. It is ugly. I want to get rid of this sex obsession but nothing seems to help. What should I do?
It is not a sex obsession, sir, it is a BRAHMACHARYA OBSESSION. And who told you that sex is dirty? All life exists through sex, all life grows out of it. All that is beautiful is sexual. The cuckoo crying is not saying a prayer, it is a sexual call. And the flowers Flowering are not flowering for your dead so-called gods in your temples, it is a sexual flowering. All that is beautiful in existence is sexual. And it seems you have not even heard my name. You are asking such a question! what seems you must be an absolute stranger here. Have you ever heard my name or not? You say: I WANT TO ATTAIN TO BRAHMACHARYA. But why should you want to attain to BRAHMACHARYA? You should try to understand your sexuality. BRAHMACHARYA comes as a consequence. It is not some thing that you attain or that…