According to Osho, your suffering persists because the vow of celibacy is a violent repression; repression drives sexuality from its natural center into the mind, returning as thoughts, fantasies, and dreams. Life cannot be changed by force but by awareness: understand, watch, and let natural experience teach you—then desires relax on their own without vows or compensatory disciplines.
If you try to crush sex with a promise, it hides and pops up in your head; calmly understand and watch it, and it settles.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
In order for one to stay awake at the time of death, or in order for one to successfully experience a conscious death in meditation, please explain in detail how a seeker should work on the following: the body system, the breathing system, the state of breathing, the state of one's being, celibacy, the state of one's mind.
Recently, a well-known scientist conducted many experiments in this area. He took twenty patients suffering from the same illness. Ten of them he treated with medicine, while he kept the other ten only on water. The interesting thing was that the patients in both categories recovered together. Now what does this mean? What it means is simply that it is neither a question of medicine nor of water. The big question is that of persuading a man to drop his illness. If water does this work, then the patient can be cured by water. If homeopathic sugar pills succeed, then he is cured by the pills. If a charm proves effective, then it can cure too. If a patient has faith in a pinch of ash given by a fakir, then it can cure him too. Faith in the water of the Ganges also does the trick. Everything works. Even…
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…
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 master, I have lived my whole life as a celibate, but I still suffer from bad sexual thoughts. Why?
Ravishankar, if you had not suffered, that would have been a miracle! If you have tried to live the life of a celibate, what else can you expect? And why do you call sexual thoughts bad? They are neutral, neither good nor bad. Sexual thoughts are sexual thoughts. Why bring these moral values in? Because of these moral values you remain in a constant fight, in an inner war, a civil war. You go on fighting with your own energy -- the sexual energy -- and that is the only energy you have. There is no other energy; it is the only energy, which has to be transformed into spirituality. This same sexual energy, which you are calling bad, is going to become a great perfume in you. But trying to live a celibate life without meditation is dangerous. It keeps you obsessed. It keeps you continuously in sexual fantasies.…