Celibacy

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…

Beloved Osho, when you said that you are not celibate, I was shocked. I guess I thought you had transcended sex. Why did this disturb me?

I was also shocked, because I was thinking you all would be shocked and only one camel got the shock. But his question is meaningful. You were shocked, Mr. Camel, because you had certain expectations of me. It is strange -- I don't expect anything from you, and you go on expecting how I should be, what I should do, what I should not. I am giving you total freedom, and you want me to be a prisoner of your expectations? You were shocked because of the long, ancient tradition of a very surprising phenomenon: masters have been imposing their ideas on their disciples; in return the disciples were imposing their ideas on the masters. And it was not that the master was really a master -- because he followed his own followers, he fulfilled their expectations. If he does not fulfill their expectations all his respectability is gone, the…

As sex is closely related to death, what is the meaning of spontaneous celibacy?

Sex is more closely related to birth than to death. Birth is out of sex; birth is a sexual phenomenon. Naturally, sex is also closely related to death -- but as a by-product. Because birth is out of sex, death is also going to be out of sex. Hence the nonsensical idea arose in the East that if you remain celibate, if you remain a BRAHMACHARY, if you go beyond sex, you will never die -- you will become an immortal. That is foolish, because death is not something that is going to happen in the future, it has already happened with birth. You cannot avoid it. You can indulge in sex or you can indulge in celibacy, it is going to make no difference. Mulla Nasrudin had completed his hundredth year, and a few journalists came to interview him. He was the first citizen of his town who had…

Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHY ARE YOU SO AGAINST CELIBACY? I am not. Nature is -- and I am all in favor of nature. To me, there is no other way to find truth, to find peace, to find meaningfulness, than being natural. Celibacy is one of the most unnatural things. It has destroyed so many human beings -- millions -- Catholic monks, Hindu monks, Buddhist monks, Jaina monks, nuns. For centuries they have been teaching celibacy; and the most amazing thing is, even in the twentieth century, not a single medical expert, physiologist, has stood up and said that celibacy is impossible, that in the very nature of things, it cannot happen. To impose celibacy means to pervert the sexual energy of man. It is celibacy that has created homosexuality. It is celibacy that has created sodomy. Perhaps you don't understand the word "sodomy"; it is making love to animals.