According to Osho, such labels are propaganda by vested interests - politicians, religious leaders, and sensationalist media - who seize on a single word, sex, and repeat lies until they seem true. His teaching is about transcending sex and using prosperity as a base for spirituality, not indulgence. Because he refuses to chase newspapers or refute every rumor, and lacks worldly power, fabrications spread unchecked.
People who feel threatened pick catchy words, repeat them in the news, and because Osho doesn't fight every rumor, the labels stick - even though he teaches going beyond sex and using wealth to grow spiritually.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, why have misleading labels like "sex guru" and "guru of the rich" been attached to your name? Is there a conspiracy behind keeping you encircled by misconceptions?
The public wants whatever is sensational. Newspapers are ready to print it. They are afraid to print against those who hold power, because power will harass them. If someone holds a high political office, even the truth against him cannot be printed. I have no power in my hands. I cannot harm anyone. Whatever falsehood one wants to print about me can be printed. But lies have no life in them. And slowly, all over the world, people have begun to understand that there is certainly a conspiracy against me. Just a week ago, the wife of one of my sannyasins, Vimalakirti, was here. Vimalakirti is the great-grandson of Germany’s last emperor. He was my sannyasin; his wife is also my sannyasin. He attained death in sannyas. His father, his mother, his brother, were all present at his passing. From the very first day the doctors had said there was…
Osho, why are you called "the sex guru" in the west?
Why so much emphasis? People are obsessed particularly the religious people are obsessed. This label of "sex guru" comes from religious people. "Were you shocked by the porno film we saw?" a friend asked the Polack Pope. The Pope said, "I was even more shocked the second time I saw it!" The way people have been brought up for centuries is life-negative. I affirm life with all that it contains. That does not mean that I don't want you to change -- in fact, that is the only way to change. First you have to accept where you are, what you are. First you have to explore your reality, and then only you can find ways to go beyond it. You have to explore into all the possibilities of your existence. And sex is one of the most important phenomena, in fact the most important phenomenon of your life. But…
You are known throughout the world as the tantra master or the sex guru, yet in the three years I have been in your ashram, not only have I had less sex than ever before in my life, but thought and heard less about it as well. Will you explain this discrepancy?
Just the other day in a magazine, CINE BLITZ, I came across a headline, and they say I am the Hugh Heffner of the spiritual world. And what are they talking about? Yes, I teach you how to go deep in love. I teach you how to go deep in sex too, because that is the only way to go beyond. To go through it is the only way to go beyond it -- but my goal is to take you beyond. Now this is a problem, and I am going to be misunderstood again and again, all over the world. People have become accustomed: they think religious people have to be against sex; and those who are not against sex, how can they be religious? These have become DEADLY settled categories. I am unsettling all those categories, and I don't expect the world to immediately change so much from…
Beloved Osho, doesn't your recurrent reference to the word "orgasm" continue to propagate the image of the "sex guru"?
For example, we know that no impotent person has ever been enlightened. No impotent person has ever been a prophet or a messiah. No impotent person has ever been a genius in any field -- science, music, art, dance. In the whole history of man, not a single impotent person has been able to contribute anything. It seems that all creativity consists of your sexual energy. And if a person doesn't have sexual energy, perhaps he will become absolutely dull, lusterless; his eyes will lose shine. He will lose interest in everything; he may not live long. And there is no need... because sex is the energy that has to be used as a ladder for your higher growth. I am not the sex guru. I am the anti-sex guru, if anything. The sex guru you can find in the Vatican. His perversion is not to touch women but to…
You are also known as the sex guru. What do you presently think of love?
The definition which calls me a sex guru is not only false, it is absurd. To put it right: I am the only person in the whole world who is antisex. But that needs tremendous understanding. You cannot hope for that understanding from journalists. I have been talking about sex so that it can be transformed. All the religious teachers can be called sex gurus except me, because they are teaching repression of sex, which keeps a man continuously sexual; he will never be transformed. He will never go beyond sex. Repression is the way to keep you attached to whatever you have repressed. I have been teaching expression, so that you are getting rid of it by expressing it. You are not holding it back inside your unconscious. And the more you express your sexuality, with no guilt, with no sin -- because it is not a sin; it…