sex – Sat Sangha Salon

Consciousness is the Bridge – Osho

Would you talk to us about using sexual energy for growth, as it seems to be one of our main preoccupations in the West.

Sex is the energy. So I will not say sexual energy – because there is no other energy. Sex is the only energy you have got. The energy can be transformed – it can become a higher energy. The higher it moves, the less and less sexuality remains in it. And there is an end peak where it becomes simply love and compassion. The ultimate flowering we can call divine energy, but the base, the seat, remains sex. So sex is the first, bottom layer of energy – and God is the top layer. But the same energy moves.

The first thing to be understood is that I don’t divide energies. Once you divide, then a dualism is created. Once you divide, then conflict and struggle are created. Once you divide energies, you are divided – then you will be for or against sex. I am neither for nor against, because I don’t divide. I say sex is the energy, the name of the energy; call that energy X. Sex is the name of that X energy, the unknown energy, when you are using it only as a biological reproduction force. It becomes divine once it is freed from biological bondage, once it becomes non-physical – then it is the love of Jesus or the compassion of Buddha.

The West is much obsessed today because of Christianity. Two thousand years of Christian suppression of sex energy has made the Western mind too much obsessed with it. First, for two thousand years the obsession was how to kill it. You cannot kill it. No energy can be killed – energy can only be transformed. There is no way to destroy energy. Nothing can be destroyed in this world, it can only be transformed, changed, moved into a new realm and dimension. Destruction is impossible. You cannot create a new energy, and you cannot destroy an old energy. Creation and destruction are both beyond you. They cannot be done. Now, scientists agree to this – not even a single atom can be destroyed.

For two thousand years, Christianity was trying to destroy sex energy. Religion consisted of becoming absolutely without sex. That created a madness. The more you fight, the more you suppress, the more sexual you become. And then sex moves deeper into the unconscious. It poisons your whole being. So if you read the lives of Christian saints, you will see they are obsessed with sex. They cannot pray, they cannot meditate. Whatsoever they do, sex comes in. And they think that the devil is playing tricks. Nobody is playing tricks. If you suppress, you are the devil.

After two thousand years of continuous sex-repression, the West became fed up with it. It was too much. The whole wheel turned. Now, instead of repression, indulgence, to indulge in it became the new obsession. From one pole the mind moved to the other pole. The disease remained the same. Once it was repression. Now it is how to indulge more and more in it. Both are sick attitudes.

Sex has to be transformed – neither repressed nor madly indulged. And the only possible way to transform sex is to be sexual with deep meditative awareness. It is just the same as I was saying about anger. Move into sex, but with an alert, conscious, mindful being. Don’t allow it to become an unconscious force. Don’t be pulled and pushed by it. Move knowingly, understandingly, lovingly. But make sexual experience a meditative experience. Meditate in it. This is what the East has done through Tantra.

And once you are meditative in sexual experience, the quality of it starts changing. The same energy which is moving into sexual experience starts moving towards consciousness. You can become so alert in a peak sexual orgasm, as you can otherwise never become – because no other experience is so deep, no other experience is so absorbing, no other experience is so total. In a sexual orgasm, you are totally absorbed, root and all – your whole being vibrating, your whole being in it. Body, mind – both are in it. And thinking stops completely. Even for a single second, when the orgasm reaches its peak, thinking stops completely, because you are so total you cannot think.

In a sexual orgasm you are. Being is there without any thinking. In this moment, if you can become alert, conscious, then sex can become the door towards the divine. And if in this moment you can become alert, that alertness can be carried in other moments also, in other experiences also. It can become a part of you. Then eating, walking, doing some work, you can carry that alertness. Through sex, the alertness has touched your deepest core. It has penetrated you. Now you can carry it. And, if you become meditative, you will come to realize a new fact. That fact is that it is not sex that gives you bliss, it is not sex that gives you the ecstasy. Rather, it is a thoughtless state of the mind and total involvement in the act that gives you a blissful feeling.

Once you understand this then sex will be needed less and less, because that thoughtless state of mind can be created without it – that’s what meditation means. And that totality of being can be created without sex. Once you know that the same phenomenon can happen without sex, sex will be needed less and less. A moment will come when sex will not be needed at all.

Remember, sex is always dependent on the other. So in sex, a bondage, a slavery remains. Once you can create this total orgasmic phenomenon without any dependence on anybody else, when it has become an inner source, you are independent, you are free. That’s what is meant when, in India, we say only a brahmachari, an absolutely celibate person, can be free – because now he is not dependent on anybody else, his ecstasy is his own.

Sex disappears through meditation, but this is not destroying the energy. Energy is never destroyed; only the form of the energy changes. Now it is no longer sexual, and when the form is no longer sexual, then you become loving.

So, really, a person who is sexual cannot love. His love can only be a show. His love is just a means towards sex. A person who is sexual uses love just as a technique towards sex. It is a means. A sexual person cannot really love, he can only exploit the other; and love becomes just a way to approach the other.

A person who has become non-sexual, and the energy is moving within, has become auto-ecstatic. His ecstasy is his own. Such a person will be loving for the first time. His love will be a constant showering, a constant sharing, a constant giving. But to achieve this, you are not required to be anti-sex. To achieve this, you have to accept sex as part of life, of natural life. Move with it – only move with more consciousness. Consciousness is the bridge, the golden bridge, from this world to the other, from hell to heaven, from the ego to the divine.

Enough for today?

-Osho

From My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, Discourse #5, Q2

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The Inner Alchemy – Osho

Paripoorn chandra amrit rasaiki karanam naivedyam.

Accumulation of the nectar of the inner full moon is naivedya, the food offering.

You must have heard about the Taoist concept of yin and yang – the concept of polar opposites into one reality. Reality exists through polar opposites – through the positive and the negative, through the male and the female, through yin and yang.

Reality is a dialectical process. And when I say “dialectical process,” I mean it is not a simple process, it is very complex. A simple process means one element working; a dialectical process means two polar opposites working in one direction. And though they appear as opposites, they create a symphony – they create a musical harmony. And that harmony is reality.

Man and woman, they mean humanity. Man alone is not humanity, nor is woman alone humanity. Humanity – the music, the synthesis we call humanity – is a dialectical phenomenon. Man and woman both work to create humanity, they both help to create humanity. And the way of their creating it is dialectical. They exist as polar opposites, and the inner tension between the two creates the energy for movement, for a process of further growth.

It is the same on every plane. If we go deep down with the physicist to the atom’s inner structure, then again, we find two polar opposites working there: the negative electricity and the positive electricity. Because of these two polar opposites, matter is created. If there were only positive electricity, the world would disappear immediately. If there were only negative electricity, there would be nothing. But negative electricity and positive electricity create an inner tension, and because of that inner tension matter exists.

The same is the case with the inner being of man also. This sutra is concerned with that. We discussed how awareness creates an inner sun. But this sutra talks about the creation of an inner moon. The sun is symbolic of the inner positivity and the moon is symbolic of the inner negativity. The sun is the inner male and the moon is the inner female. These words are symbolic, and for Indian yoga, particularly, they are very meaningful. By “sun” the outer sun is not what is meant, nor by “moon” the outer moon. These two words “sun” and “moon” are used for the inner universe.

Indian yoga divides man into two parts: the sun part and the moon part. Even one breath is known as the sun breath and another breath is known as the moon breath. And, really, this is one of the deepest findings. If you stop the moon breath and just breathe from the sun breath, your body will become hot. And such a great heat can be created, simply by using only one kind of breath, that it seems inconceivable in physiological terms. Among Tibetans there exists a heat yoga in which breathing is done only through this sun breath, not using the moon breath at all.

Ordinarily the breath is continuously changing, but Western medical science has not yet taken note of it. Breathing is not a simple process. It is a dialectical process. You are changing your nostrils within each hour. Between forty and sixty minutes, approximately, your nostrils change, and you begin to take your breath from the other nostril; then again it changes. When you need more heat in the body – for example, if suddenly you become angry – your sun breath starts.

Yoga says that when you are angry, if you use your moon breath and stop the sun breath, you cannot be angry at all, because the moon breath creates a deep coolness inside. The whole body is divided between the sun and the moon, and the mind is also divided between the sun and the moon.

So look at man not as one, because nothing can exist as just one. Everything exists through duality. You are divided into two: you have a negative part and you have a positive part. The positive is known as the sun in Indian symbology and the negative as moon. The negative is cool, silent, still. The positive is hot, vibrant with energy, active. The sun is the active part in you and the moon the inactive part, and if the active and the inactive both come to a deep equilibrium you are suddenly enlightened. If one is more emphatic, you have an imbalance, but if both are of equal force, then they balance each other, negate each other, and the moment both are of equal force, your inner balance is regained, and you reach to a different reality – the reality of the non-dual. That one nondual reality can be felt only when both of these dualities in you are balanced. Then you transcend them.

In the world we exist as duality. Beyond the world we exist as non-duality, as one. Think of yourself as a triangle; two angles exist in the world and the third angle beyond the world. Two angles belong to this world and one angle belongs to that world – the world of the Brahman. But if these two are in an imbalance, you cannot go beyond them. You go beyond them only when they regain balance. This balancing is nirvana, this balancing is moksha, this balancing is the centering. Awareness works to balance this duality. And the moment this duality is balanced, you cannot be reborn again – you disappear from the world.

You can be born again and again only if there is an imbalance. If the balance comes to a totality, if the balance becomes total, it is impossible to be born again. You disappear from the world; the body cannot exist anymore. Then you cannot re-enter a body again. So first we will try to understand what this inner sun is and what this inner moon is, and how they are balanced.

This sutra says, “Accumulation of the nectar of the inner full moon is naivedya, the food offering.” You need a full moon in you to offer to the Divine as a food. That only can be the food for the Divine – a full moon inside.

Awareness works in a double way. It creates a sun, and it also creates a moon. We talked about how it creates a sun inside. When you become aware of whatsoever is happening in you, of the innermost unconscious activities, you become Enlightened. The very cells of your body become conscious; you become light. Your consciousness reaches to the very pores of your body. Just like the rays of the sun reach into the earth, your inner awareness, once awakened, begins to work in every cell of the body and every fiber, every nerve of the body. Your whole body is filled with light. But this is only one part of awareness, this is only one process of awareness. Rays from your center also go to your periphery, to the circumference. The more your rays go to the circumference, the cooler your center becomes.

I do not know whether you have heard of a particular theory about the sun – the outer sun; I do not know whether it is right or not, but it is meaningful in helping to understand the inner reality. They say the sun at its deepest center is the coolest spot in the solar system; it is not hot at all. The heat is only on the periphery, on the circumference, not in the inner center of the sun. Because of helium gas around the sun, heat is created; because of the helium and its chain explosion of atoms, heat is created, and then the heat spreads to the solar family.

The sun has a body, and it is the center. The solar family is the body, and the earth belongs to the body as a cell. The heat goes to the solar family, it spreads. But the sun in itself is a cold thing, absolutely cold, and at its deepest center, it is the coldest spot in existence. It should be so because reality exists in polarities. If the sun is the hottest thing, it must have something inside it which balances the heat. Take a wheel that is just moving on the street: the wheel moves, but in the center the hub on which it moves remains still. The movement must have something non-moving in the center, otherwise movement will not be possible.

In this world of manifestations, everything exists within polar opposites. You are alive because you have death inside. If you had no death inside, you could not be alive. So do not think that one day it suddenly happens that death comes to you. It is an inner growth. It is not something that you meet, that you encounter – no! It is something toward which you are daily growing. One day the growth is complete, and you are dead. It is an inner phenomenon. You are alive with a death center. You cannot be alive without a death center.

Nothing exists without its polar opposite. Life and death are just two positive and negative realities. So it looks logical, dialectical also, but it is not yet proved that the sun has at its center a cold spot, an absolutely cold spot, the polar opposite to the heat on its circumference. It may be true; it may not be true: that is irrelevant. But inside it is absolutely true. When you become aware, the heat begins to travel toward your circumference. Each cell of your body will become heated, warm, because of the awareness penetrating. The second counterpart will be that your center of being will become cooler and cooler and cooler. That is the moon working. The sun is the warmth spreading, the light spreading.

And you must know that light has two qualities – light and warmth. Heat is just concentrated light; light is nothing but dispersed heat. So when light travels to your body, every cell will become warm, enlightened, aware. Sleep is a cold thing; night is a cold thing. That is why we sleep in the night: it is a cold time. And in the morning, with the rising sun, everything becomes warm, alive. Then it is difficult to sleep and easy to be awake.

When your circumference is cold, when each body cell is cold, asleep, your center will be a hot spot. Because of that hot spot in the center, you will be sexual, you will be angry, you will be greedy, you will be everything. Your center will be in a fever. This heat begins to travel. Of course, when heat leaves your center, it spreads; and the more it spreads, the less it is heat and the more it is light.

The sunrays on the earth are life giving. They have travelled much. If you go nearer and nearer to them, they will become death giving, because then they will not be warm: then they will be just pure fire.

As it is, the whole-body structure is just cold. You feel heat only in anger, in sex, in desire, in passion. That is not light, but simply a feverish phenomenon. Because of this, sex is felt as a release – because you lose a certain quantity of heat, and you are relieved; you lose a certain quantity of fever, and you are released. [. . . . ]

In sex you are releasing a particular amount of energy. They say that in one sex act you release 120 calories of heat – 120 calories! It is the same if you run fast for one mile. Then you will release the same amount of calories – 120. That is why there is much talk about whether sex can help heart disease. It can help! It releases energy. For persons who are well fed, it helps to delay heart disease. It releases energy, but it is not a solution. It is just a temporary arrangement. It just creates a leakage in your system from which energy is released.

Any day that you are angry your whole body is heated. It becomes feverish. The center releases anger: energy comes to the periphery. Ordinarily it is cold. The periphery is cold ordinarily, and the center is hot. The reverse will be the case when awareness happens to you. When you meditate and go deep within, when you become aware of every activity, everything will take a turn – an about turn. Your periphery will not go into anger, not go into sex, not go into greed, not go into passion. It will lose its coldness – its sleepy coldness. It will become warm, alive and aware. And because this energy is released to the periphery every twenty-four hours continuously, you will not need any anger or any sex.

A Buddha doesn’t need anger. It is absolutely useless for him because the very energy system has changed. He is using his heat for light and you are using your light for heat. The same fuel can be used to burn your house and the same fuel can be used to light it. The fuel is the same, but the direction changes. The inner fuel, the inner energy, becomes fire – suicidal. It burns you down, and ultimately you are just ashes. In the end, when death comes near you, you are just ashes. Everything is burnt out because you used your energy not as a light, but as a fire.

It becomes fire if it is concentrated in the center and is released only temporarily, whenever it is overflowing. In a sudden shock it comes to the periphery and is released. This is a very chaotic state. You go on accumulating it inside. Then one day it is overflowing, and you have to throw it.

We go on rationalizing our actions. When you get angry you say that someone has made you angry. No, really, it is that you were ready: you were overflowing inside. You do not know this because you were not aware. You were overflowing with a certain amount of energy which was waiting to be released. When someone abuses you, insults you, and you become angry, you think that this person is creating anger in you.

No, this person is simply giving you a situation and opportunity to release the overflowing energy. In a way, he is your friend, a helper. If he is not there you will be in a very difficult situation. If no one is giving you any opportunity to throw your energy, you will project, you will imagine something, and you will get angry with anything at all.

People get angry with their shoes; they will throw them. They can get angry with the door; they become violent with it. They can be angry with everything. When no opportunity is given, they can even become angry with themselves. They will begin to harm themselves or they will create some substitutes. […]

If you have energy in the center which is feverish, not transferred to the periphery, not used as light for the whole body and for your whole being, this is bound to happen. Every day you will accumulate energy, and then you will have to throw it. And this is nonsense! For the whole life you are doing this: accumulating, throwing; accumulating, throwing. What are you doing twenty-four hours a day? Just accumulating energy to throw it. Then when energy is there, the only problem is how to throw it. So we throw it in sex, in anger, in greed. When energy is thrown, then the only problem is how to accumulate it.

What sort of life is this? A vicious circle. With awareness the whole mechanism changes. With awareness, every moment your inner center is sending its energy to every pore of your body. And your body is not a small thing. It is a miniature universe. As above, so below: everybody is a small universe. And when I say “small,” I feel guilty because, really, it is not small. It is as vast as the universe. But because of our language, there are problems. The universe appears vast and your body appears small.

What is the difference between the two? They say that if we can throw out all space from the earth, if we can compress it and throw out the space, if the vacant space in it is thrown out, our earth will be just like a small ball. If we can throw out all the empty space from the Himalayas, they can be put into a match box. The material is not much, the matter is not much. The matter is very small, only the emptiness in it is vast.

So how to judge whether a thing is big or small? A very small thing can be blown up to any bigness if we put space in it. If we put as much space into your body as there is in the earth, you will be like the earth. So all the differences are of spaces – empty spaces. No difference is there really.

But when I say, “a small universe,” I mean only this: that everything that exists in the universe exists in you also. Whatsoever may be the measure, exactly everything exists in you also. So when your solar center, your sun, releases energy, it releases it in two ways. Either you are unconscious: then it releases it into sex, anger, greed and other diseases. Or if you are conscious, through this consciousness, heat is transformed into light: then it is released as light. Then you are under a shower of light continuously. Your every pore, your every cell, is bathed. There is a continuous shower of light. When this happens, your inner center begins to become cooler and cooler and cooler, and ultimately it becomes the coldest spot.

Hindus have a myth that Shankara lives on Kailash. Kailash is the coldest mythological spot– the coldest peak, the highest peak – and it is always covered with snow. This is just a symbolic way of saying that you have the coldest spot – a Kailash – in you. But you can know it only when the heat is transformed into light – never before. And the more you become aware, the more heat is transformed into light, and you begin to feel a moon inside. You begin to feel a cool, silent pool.

This sutra says:

Accumulation of the nectar of the inner full moon . . .

In the beginning, of course, you will feel it and miss it. It is just like the first day’s moon. Then there is the second-day moon, the third-day moon. You feel it and it is gone; then it grows again; then comes the full-moon night. Just like this, this inner spot of coolness grows. As your consciousness grows, your heat is transformed into light. As your periphery becomes enlightened, as your each and every cell is filled with light and becomes aware and awake, this inner moon grows. Sometimes you feel it and sometimes you miss it. Sometimes there is an inner cool breeze, and you know something has happened inside. You feel it, but then you miss it again. Then it goes on growing. Ultimately, when there is no unconsciousness left and your total energy has become light, you come to know the full moon.

Buddha has talked about this full moon in negative terms because it is the negative pole. So Buddha says that when this inner silence is achieved, it is nirvana. The word is very meaningful in reference to this sutra. Nirvana means “cessation of the flame”: a lamp is burning and then the flame disappears.

When your heat is totally transformed into light, there is no flame. That is why the moon symbol is used. The moon has light but no flame. That is why its light is cool. It is without flame, without fire. Light is there without any flame. The flame has disappeared.

When one first becomes acquainted with the sun, the light becomes like a flame, burning, hot. So if you analyze the life, the inner life, of a Buddha or of a Jesus, or of a Mahavir, many things will become apparent which are ordinarily hidden. For example, whenever a person like Buddha is born, the early life will be very revolutionary, because the moment one enters the inside the first experience is a fiery flame. The more Buddha grows older, the more the inner coolness is felt, the more the moon becomes perfect. Revolution is lost: then Buddha’s words are not revolutionary.

Jesus couldn’t get this opportunity. He was killed when he was still a revolutionary. That is why, if you compare Buddha’s sayings with Jesus’ sayings, there is a clear-cut distinction and difference. Jesus’ sayings look like that of a young man – hot! Buddha’s early sayings are also like that, but he lived to be eighty. He was not killed.

There are reasons. And one reason is this: India always knew that this happens: whenever a person goes in, the first expression is fiery, revolutionary, rebellious. That is why India never killed anyone. That is why India could never behave as Greeks behaved with Socrates and Jews behaved with Jesus. India knew much. It has known many, many such persons. India knows it is natural that whenever a Buddha enters into himself the first experience will be revolutionary. He will burst open, explode into a fiery flame. But then the flame will disappear, and ultimately there will be only a moon – silent, cool, with no fire but only light.

Jesus was killed. That is why Christianity has still remained incomplete. Christianity was based on early Jesus – on Jesus when he was just a flame. That is why Christianity has remained incomplete. Buddhism is complete. It has known Buddha in all stages. It has known Buddha’s moon in all stages – from the first day to the full-moon light. This crucifixion has been unfortunate for the West. It has proved one of the greatest misfortunes in history that Jesus was killed when he was only thirty-three, just a flame. The flame would have turned into moonlight, but the opportunity was not given. And the reason was only this: that the Jews were not aware of the inner phenomenon.

India knew many, many Buddhas, and it is always the case that whenever someone enters in, he first sees the fire, the flame, and the revolutionary spirit comes up. But if one goes on in and in, it dissolves, and then there is only silence – a moonlight silence.

This sutra says, “Accumulation of the nectar of the inner full moon . . .” This silence, this cool silence of the moon, Hindus have called nectar, the amrit, the elixir. It is not to be found somewhere else. It is in you. This nectar is in you! Once you are established in this nectar, once you are in this pool of cool moonlight, then you are a full moon inside. Then you have known both the polarities. You have known life; you have known death. You have known the sun; you have known the moon. You have known both the polarities – life and death. And once you have known both you have transcended both. That is why it is called the nectar, amrit.

Now you will not die. Now you are drunk with elixir; you cannot die. But you will not be alive in the old sense either. You have died in the old sense; you are reborn in a new meaning. Now death will not be a death and life will not be a life. Now you will be beyond both. [. . . . ]

This inner phenomenon is beyond birth and death. It is never born and never will it die, because that which is born can die and that which is not born cannot die. Death needs birth as a prerequisite, as a necessary prerequisite. You cannot die if you are not born. With this inner phenomenon – when sun and moon are balanced, when the dialectical process is finished, when the synthesis is complete – you come to feel in yourself something which is eternal.

That is why this sutra says, “Accumulation of the nectar of the inner full moon is naivedya.” Now you have become food yourself. Now you can offer yourself to the Divine. Now you are food. Now you are eternal. And why is it called “food,” naivedya? Because when you are eternal, you can become food for the eternal. And by “food” the ordinary meaning is also implied. When you take food in, it becomes one with you. It becomes your blood, it becomes your bones, it becomes you: you are your food! So when you have come to know this inner reality, the eternal reality, you can offer it as food to the universe, to the existence.

By this is meant that now you can become the bones of the universe, you can become the blood of the universe. Now you can be one with it just like food becomes one with you. The meeting is complete because you have become food for the Divine. Then you are naivedya. Then the offering can be accepted.

But you cannot offer your body as the food. It will be food, but for the vultures, not for the Divine. This cannot be offered as food for the Divine. Your body comes out of the earth and goes back to the earth. It can only be eaten by the earth again: “Dust unto dust.” It can only return to dust, so this body cannot be offered to the Divine.

One young seeker came to Gautam Buddha. He said, “I have come to offer myself to you. Accept me.”

Buddha asked him, “What are you offering – your body? But that is already offered and the earth will claim it, so how can you offer it to me? What are you offering? Tell me exactly!”

The man was confused. He said, “Whatsoever I have, I offer to you.”

Buddha asked him, “What do you have? What is it that belongs to you? Do your thoughts belong to you? They belong to the society; your mind belongs to the society. Your body belongs to your parents, to the earth, to the sky, to water, to fire, to many things – to the five elements. What do you have that you can offer to me?”

The man could not answer because he had nothing else. He could not think of anything else, so Buddha said, “Do not offer now. First find out what you are. And the moment you find it, it is already offered. Then there is no need to offer.”

When you find the inner balance that is known from finding the sun and finding the moon, only when you know both, they balance each other, and in that balance you escape from duality. And then the third angle of the triangle is touched. For the first time you are above yourself: you are the inner self. Now you can look down at yourself – at your sun, your moon, your body, your soul, your positivity, your negativity, your male, your female. Now you can look down at yourself – at the whole world of duality, at multidimensional duality – and now you can become naivedya, the food offering.

But now there is no need even to offer: you have already offered. Now there is no need to ask to be accepted: you are already accepted. You are one. Just as food becomes one with you, you become one with the Divine. And by “Divine” I mean the Whole, the Totality, everything – the very Existence.

So what to do? Transform heat into light: that is the mantra: transform heat into light! Do not use heat as heat: use it as light. When you think anger is coming to you, close your eyes and meditate on what anger is. Dig deep inside and find out the source from where it is coming. What we are doing ordinarily is just the opposite. When we get angry, we begin to think about the object of anger, about who has created it, and not of the source of anger, from where it is coming. When you get angry, close your eyes. This is the right moment to meditate.

Close your eyes, go in, and find out from where this anger is coming. Follow it to the very source. Go deep, and you will come to the source of heat from where the accumulated energy is bursting forth to go out.

Observe it; do not indulge in it – because if you indulge in it, it will be thrown out without being transformed. And do not suppress it – because if you suppress it, it will be thrown back to the original source which is overflowing. It cannot absorb it. It will be thrown back again with a more forceful movement. So do not suppress it and do not indulge in it. Just be conscious. Move inward to the source. This very movement slows down the process; this very observation transforms the quality of anger, because this calm observation is an antidote.

Anger and calm observation are different phenomena. When this calm observation enters into anger, it changes the energy, the very chemical composition of it, and the heat becomes light. That is the change: heat becomes light! Then the anger is neither thrown back to the original source which cannot contain it because it is overflowing, nor is it thrown to the object in a wastage, a foolish wastage. Then this energy neither moves out to the object of anger, nor is it suppressed back to the original source. With observation this energy becomes diffused. It moves to the periphery of your body as light. When diffused, it moves as light, and the very anger becomes ojas, the very anger becomes a light, an inner light.

So do not be disturbed and disappointed if you have much anger. That only shows you have much energy. A person born without anger cannot be transformed. He has no energy. So be happy that you have energy, but do not misuse it. Energy can be misused; it can be transformed. Energy in itself is neutral. It will not tell you what to do with it – you have to decide. This is the secret science of inner alchemy – to change heat into light, to change coal into diamonds, to change baser elements into gold.

These are just symbols. Alchemists were not really concerned with changing baser metals into higher metals, but they had to hide and they had to make an esoteric, secret symbology, because it was very difficult in past ages to talk about the inner science and not be murdered or killed. Jesus was killed: he was an alchemist. And the Christianity that developed, that followed Jesus, went quite against him. The Christian Church began to kill and murder those who were again trying alchemy.

This word “alchemy” is very beautiful. Our “chemistry” is born out of alchemy. The word “chemistry” comes from “alchemy,” but “alchemy” itself is a very deep and significant word. The word “alchemy” comes from Egypt. The old name of Egypt was “Khem” and “Al Khem” means “the secret science of Egypt.” The Egyptians were deep in the alchemy of inner transformation, in how to transform the inner chemistry. [. . . . ]

This process is alchemical. Observe anger, and anger is transformed into light. Observe sex, and sex is transformed into light. Observe any inner phenomenon which creates heat. Observe it, and through observation it becomes light. And if your every heat phenomenon is transformed into light, you will come to feel the inner moon. And when there is no heat left, then you have accumulated the nectar of the full moon.

And through this nectar you become immortal. Not in this body, not with this body: you become immortal because you transcend life and death both.

Then you are naivedya: then you are a food offering to the Divine – to the Total.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2, Discourse #5

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

The Light of Awareness – Osho

We feel that to penetrate and transform the deeper layers of the unconscious only through awareness is difficult and not enough. What else should one do other than the practice of awareness? Please explain more about the practical dimensions of this matter.

The unconscious can be transformed only through awareness. It is difficult, but there is no other way. There are many methods for being aware, but awareness is necessary. You can use methods to be aware, but you will have to be aware.

If someone asks whether there is any method to dispel darkness except by light, howsoever difficult it may be, that is the only way – because darkness is simply the absence of light. So you have to create the presence of light, and then darkness is not there.

Unconsciousness is nothing but an absence – the absence of consciousness. It is not something positive in itself, so you cannot do anything except be aware. If unconsciousness were something in its own right, then it would be a different matter – but it is not. Unconsciousness doesn’t mean something; it only means not consciousness. It is just an absence. It has no existence in itself; in itself it is not. The word “unconscious” simply shows the absence of consciousness and nothing else. When we say “darkness” the word is misleading, because the moment we say “darkness” it appears that darkness is something that is there. It is not, so you cannot do anything with darkness directly – or can you?

You may not have observed the fact, but with darkness you cannot do anything directly. Whatsoever you want to do with darkness you will have to do with light, not with darkness. If you want darkness, then put off light. If you don’t want darkness, then put on light. But you cannot do anything directly with darkness; you will have to go via light.

Why? Why can you not go directly? You cannot go directly because there is nothing like darkness, so you cannot touch it directly. You have to do something with light, and then you have done something with darkness.

If light is there, then darkness is not there. If light is not there, then darkness is there. You can bring light into this room, but you cannot bring darkness. You can take light out from this room, but you cannot take darkness out from this room. There exists no connection between you and darkness. Why? If darkness were there, then man could be related somehow, but darkness is not there.

Language gives you a fallacy that darkness is something. Darkness is a negative term. It exists not. It connotes only that light is not there – nothing more – and the same is with unconsciousness. So when you ask what to do other than to be aware, you ask an irrelevant question. You will have to be aware; you cannot do anything else.

Of course, there are many methods for being aware – mm? – that is a different thing. There are many ways to create light – but light will have to be created. You can create a fire and there will be no darkness. And you can use a kerosene lamp and there will be no darkness, and you can use electricity and there will be no darkness. But whatsoever the case, whatsoever the method of producing light, light has to be produced.

So light is a must, and whatsoever I will say in reference to this question will be about methods to produce awareness. They are not alternatives, remember. They are not alternatives to awareness – nothing can be. Awareness is the only possibility for dispelling darkness, for dispelling unconsciousness. But how to create awareness? I talked about one method which is the purest: to be aware inside of whatsoever happens on the boundary line of the unconscious and of the conscious – to be aware there.

Anger is there. Anger is produced in darkness; anger has roots in the unconscious. Only branches and leaves come into the conscious. Roots, seeds, the energy source, are in the unconscious. You become aware only of faraway branches. Be conscious of these branches. The more conscious you are, the more you will be capable of looking into darkness.

Have you observed at any time that if you look deeply in darkness for a certain time, a certain dim light begins to be there? If you concentrate in darkness, you begin to feel and you begin to see. You can train yourself, and then in darkness itself there is a certain amount of light – because, really, in this world nothing can be absolute, and nothing is. Everything is relative. When we say “darkness,” it doesn’t mean absolute darkness. It only means that there is less light. If you practice to see in it, you will be capable of seeing. Look! Focus yourself in the darkness! And then, by and by, your eyes are strengthened and you begin to see.

Inner darkness, unconsciousness, is the same. Look into it. But you can look only if you are not active. If you begin to act, your mind is distracted. Don’t act inside. Anger is there – don’t act, don’t condemn, don’t appreciate, don’t indulge in it, and don’t suppress it. Don’t do anything – just look at it! Observe it! Understand the distinction.

What happens ordinarily is quite the reverse. If you are angry, then your mind is focused on the cause of anger outside – always! Someone has insulted you – you are angry. Now there are three things: the cause of anger outside, the source of anger inside, and in between these two you are. Anger is your energy inside, the cause which has provoked your energy to come up is outside, and you are in between. The natural way of the mind is not to be aware of the source, but to be focused on the cause outside. Whenever you are angry you are in deep concentration on the cause outside.

Mahavir has called krodha – anger – a sort of meditation. He has named it roudra dhyan – meditation on negative attitudes. It is! – because you are concentrated. Really, when you are in deep anger you are so concentrated that the whole world disappears. Only the cause of anger is focused. Your total energy is on the cause of anger, and you are so much focused on the cause that you forget yourself completely. That’s why in anger you can do things about which, later on, you can say, “I did them in spite of myself.” You were not.

For awareness you have to take an about-turn. You have to concentrate not on the cause outside, but on the source inside. Forget the cause. Close your eyes, and go deep and dig into the source. Then you can use the same energy which was to be wasted on someone outside . . . the energy moves inwards. Anger has much energy. Anger is energy, the purest of fires inside. Don’t waste it outside.

Take another example. You are feeling sexual: sex is again energy, fire. But whenever you feel sexual, again you are focused on someone outside, not on the source. You begin to think of someone – of the lover, of the beloved, A-B-C-D – but when you are filled with sex your focus is always on the other. You are dissipating energy. [. . .]

Science is more concerned with the cause and religion is more concerned with the source. The source is always inside; the cause is always outside. With cause you are in a chain reaction. With cause you are connected with your environment. With source you are connected with yourself. So remember this. This is the purest method to change unconscious energy into conscious energy. Take an about-turn – look inside! It is going to be difficult because our look has become fixed. We are like a person whose neck is paralyzed and who cannot move and look back. Our eyes have become fixed. We have been looking outside for lives together – for millennia – so we don’t know how to look inside.

Do this: whenever something happens in your mind, follow it to the source. Anger is there – a sudden flash has come to you – close your eyes, meditate on it. From where is this anger arising? Never ask the question: who has made it possible? Who has made you angry? That is a wrong question. Ask which energy in you is transforming into anger – from where is this anger coming up, bubbling up? What is the source inside from where this energy is coming?

Are you aware that in anger you can do something which you cannot do when you are not in anger? A person in anger can throw a big stone easily. When he is not angry he cannot even lift it. He has much energy when he is angry. A hidden source is now with him. So if a man is mad, he becomes very strong. Why? From where is this energy coming? It is not coming from anything outside. Now all his sources are burning simultaneously – anger, sex, everything, is burning simultaneously. Every source is available.

Be concerned with from where anger is bubbling up, from where the sex desire has come in. Follow it, take steps backwards. Meditate silently and go with anger to the roots. It is difficult but it is not impossible. It is not easy. It is not going to be easy because it is a fight against a long, rooted habit. The whole past has to be broken, and you have to do something new which you have never done before. It is just the weight of sheer habit which will create the difficulty. But try it, and then you are creating a new direction for energy to move. You are beginning to be a circle, and in a circle energy is never dissipated.

My energy comes up and moves outside – it can never become a circle now – it is simply dissipated. If my movement inwards is there, then the same energy which was going out turns upon itself. My meditation leads this energy back to the same source from where the anger was coming. It becomes a circle. This inner circle is the strength of a Mahavir. The sex energy, not moving to someone else, moves back to its own source. This circle of sex energy is the strength of a buddha.

We are weaklings, not because we have less energy than a buddha: we have the same quanta of energy, everyone is born with the same energy quanta, but we are accustomed to dissipating it. It simply moves away from us and never comes back. It cannot come back! Once it is out of you, it can never come back – it is beyond you.

A word arises in me: I speak it out; it has flown away. It is not going to come back to me, and the energy that was used in producing it, that was used in throwing it away, is dissipated. A word arises in me: I don’t throw it out; I remain silent. Then the word moves and moves and moves, and falls into the original source again. The energy has been reconsumed.

Silence is energy. Brahmacharya is energy. Not to be angry is energy. But this is not suppression. If you suppress anger, you have used energy again. Don’t suppress – observe and follow. Don’t fight – just move backwards with the anger. This is the purest method of awareness.

But certain other things can be used. For beginners, certain devices are possible. So I will talk about three devices. One type of device is based on body awareness. Forget anger, forget sex – they are difficult problems. And when you are in them, you become so mad that you cannot meditate. When you are angry you cannot meditate; you cannot even think about meditation. You are just mad. So forget it; it is difficult. Then use your own body as a device for awareness.

Buddha has said that when you walk, walk consciously. When you breathe, breathe consciously. The Buddhist method is known as anapanasati yoga – the yoga of the incoming and outgoing breath, incoming and outgoing breath awareness. The breath comes in: move with the breath; know, be aware, that the breath is moving in. When the breath has gone out again, move with it. Be in, be out, with the breath.

Anger is difficult, sex is difficult – breath is not so difficult. Move with the breath. Don’t allow any breath to be in or out without consciousness. This is a meditation. Now you will be focused on breathing, and when you are focused on breathing thoughts stop automatically. You cannot think, because the moment you think your consciousness moves from breath to thought. You have missed breathing.

Try this and you will know. When you are aware of breathing, thoughts cease. The same energy which is used for thoughts is being used in being aware of breath. If you start thinking, you will lose track of the breath, you will forget, and you will think. You cannot do both simultaneously.

If you are following breathing, it is a long process. One has to go into it deeply. It takes a minimum of three months and a maximum of three years. If it is done continuously twenty-four hours a day . . . it is a method for monks, those who have given up everything; only they can watch their breathing twenty-four hours a day. That’s why Buddhist monks and other traditions of monks, they reduce their living to the minimum so that no disturbance is there. They will beg for their food and they will sleep under a tree – that’s all. Their whole time is devoted to some inner practice of being aware – mm? – for example, of breath.

A Buddhist monk moves. He has to be continuously aware of his breath. The silence that you see on a Buddhist monk’s face is the silence of the awareness of breathing and nothing else. If you become aware your face will become silent, because if thoughts are not there your face cannot show anxiety, thinking. Your face becomes relaxed. Continuous awareness of breathing will stop the mind. The continuously troubled mind will stop. And if the mind stops and you are simply aware of breathing – if the mind is not functioning – you cannot be angry, you cannot be sexual.

Sex or anger or greed or jealousy or envy – anything needs the mechanism of mind. And if the mechanism stops, you cannot do anything. This again leads to the same thing. Now the energy that is used in sex, in anger, in greed, in ambition, has no outlet. And you go on continuously being concerned with breathing, day and night. Buddha has said, “Even in sleep try to be aware of breathing.” It will be difficult in the beginning, but if you can be aware in the day, then by and by this will penetrate into your sleep.

Anything penetrates into sleep if it has gone deep in the mind in the day. If you have been worried about a certain thing in the day, it gets into the sleep. If you were thinking continuously about sex, it gets into the sleep. If you were angry the whole day, anger gets into the sleep. So Buddha says there is no difficulty. If a person is continuously concerned with breathing and awareness of the breathing, ultimately it penetrates into the sleep. You cannot dream then. If your awareness is there of incoming breath and outgoing breath, then in sleep you cannot dream.

The moment you dream, this awareness will not be there. If awareness is there, dreams are impossible. So a Buddhist monk asleep is not just like you. His sleep has a different quality. It has a different depth and a certain awareness in it is there.

Ananda said to Buddha, “I have observed you for years and years together. It seems like a miracle: you sleep as if you are awake. You are in the same posture the whole night.” The hand would not move from the place where it had been put; the leg would remain in the same posture. Buddha would sleep in the same posture the whole night. Not a single movement! For nights together Ananda would sit and watch and wonder, “What type of sleep is this!” Buddha would not move. He would be as if a dead body, and he would wake up in the same posture in which he went to sleep. Ananda asked, “What are you doing? Were you asleep or not? You never move!”

Buddha said, “A day will come, Ananda, when you will know. This shows that you are not practicing anapanasati yoga rightly; it shows only this. Otherwise, this question would not have arisen. You are not practicing anapanasati yoga – if you are continuously aware of your breath in the day, it is impossible not to be conscious of it in the night. And if the mind is concerned with awareness, dreams cannot penetrate. And if there are no dreams, mind is clear, transparent. Your body is asleep, but you are not. Your body is relaxing, you are aware – the flame is there inside. So, Ananda,” Buddha is reported to have said, “I am not asleep – only the body is sleep. I am aware! and not only in sleep. Ananda – when I die, you will see: I will be aware, only the body will die.”

Practice awareness with breathing; then you will be capable of penetrating. Or practice awareness with body movements. Buddha has a word for it: he calls it “mindfulness.” He says, “Walk mindfully.” We walk without any mind in it.

A certain man was sitting before Buddha when he was talking one day. He was moving his leg and a toe unnecessarily. There was no reason for it. Buddha stopped talking and asked that man, “Why are you moving your leg? Why are you moving your toe?” Suddenly, as the Buddha asked, the man stopped. Then Buddha asked, “Why have you stopped so suddenly?”

The man said, “Why, I was not even aware that I was moving my toe or my leg! I was not aware! The moment you asked, I became aware.”

Buddha said, “What nonsense! Your leg is moving and you are not aware? So what are you doing with your body? Are you an alive man or dead? This is your leg, this is your toe, and it goes on moving and you are not even aware? Then of what are you aware? You can kill a man and you can say, ‘I was not aware.’” And, really, those who kill are not aware. It is difficult to kill someone when you are aware.

Buddha would say, “Move, walk, but be filled with consciousness. Know inwardly you are walking.” You are not to use any words; you are not to use any thoughts. You are not to say inside, “I am walking,” because if you say it then you are not aware of walking – you have become aware of your thought, and you have missed walking. Just be somatically aware – not mentally. Just feel that you are walking. Create a somatic awareness, a sensitivity, so that you can feel directly without mind coming in.

The wind is blowing – you are feeling it. Don’t use words. Just feel, and be mindful of the feeling. You are lying down on the beach, and the sand is cool, deeply cool. Feel it! – don’t use words. Just feel it – the coolness of it, the penetrating coolness of it. Just feel! Be conscious of it; don’t use words. Don’t say, “The sand is very cool.” The moment you say it you have missed an existential moment. You have become intellectual about it.

You are with your lover or with your beloved: feel the presence; don’t use words. Just feel the warmth, the love flowing. Just feel the oneness that has happened. Don’t use words. Don’t say, “I love you,” you will have destroyed it. The mind has come in. And the moment you say, “I love you,” it has become a past memory. Just feel without words. Anything felt without words, felt totally without the mind coming in, will give you a mindfulness.

You are eating: eat mindfully; taste everything mindfully. Don’t use words. The taste is itself such a great and penetrating thing. Don’t use words and don’t destroy it. Feel it to the core. You are drinking water: feel it passing through the throat; don’t use words. Just feel it; be mindful about it. The movement of the water, the coolness, the disappearing thirst, the satisfaction that follows – feel it!

You are sitting in the sun: feel the warmth; don’t use words. The sun is touching you. There is a deep communion. Feel it! In this way, somatic awareness, bodily awareness, is developed. If you develop a bodily awareness, again mind comes to a stop. Mind is not needed. And if mind stops, you are again thrown into the deep unconscious. With a very, very deep alertness you can penetrate. Now you have a light with you, and the darkness disappears.

Those who are bodily oriented, for them it is good to be somatically mindful. For those who are not bodily oriented it is better to be conscious of breathing. Those who feel it difficult, they can use some artificial devices. For example, mantra – mm? – it is an artificial device for being aware. You use a mantra such as “Rama-Rama-Rama” continuously. Inside you create a circle of “Rama-Rama-Rama” or “Aum” or “Allah,” or anything. Go on repeating it. But simple repetition is of no use. Side by side, be aware. When you are chanting “Rama-Rama-Rama,” be aware of the chanting. Listen to it – “Rama-Rama-Rama” – be aware.

It will be difficult to be aware of anger because anger comes suddenly and you cannot plan it. And when it comes you are so overwhelmed that you may forget it. So create a device like “Rama-Rama- Rama.” You can create it, and it will not be a sudden method. And if used for a long time, it becomes an inner sound. Whatsoever you are doing, there will be “Rama-Rama” as a silent sequence. Be aware of it. Then the mantra is complete, the japa is complete, the chanting is complete, when you are not only the creator of the sound but also the listener. It is not only that you are saying “Rama” – you are also listening to it. The circle is complete. I say something. You listen; the energy is dissipated. If you yourself say “Rama” and you yourself listen to it, the energy comes back. You are the speaker, you are the listener.

But be aware of it. It should not become a dead routine. Otherwise, you can go on saying “Rama- Rama-Rama” just like a parrot, without any awareness behind it. Then it is of no use. It may create a deep sleep even. It may become a hypnosis. You may become dull. Mm? Krishnamurti says that those who chant mantras, they become dull, they become stupid. And he is right in a way, but only in a way. If you use any chanting just as a mechanical repetition, you will become dull. Look at the so-called religious people: they are just dull and stupid. No intelligence, no flame in their eyes of life, of aliveness. They just look dead, like lead, heavy. They have not given anything to the world, they have not created anything. They have just repeated mantras.

Of course, if you go on repeating a particular mantra without awareness, you will be bored by it yourself, and boredom will create stupidity. You will become dull; you will lose interest. A certain sound repeated continuously can even create madness. But Krishnamurti is right only in a sense; otherwise he is completely totally wrong. And whenever one judges something by those who are not following it, really that judgement is not good. Anything must be judged by the perfect example.

The science of japa is not just to repeat. Repetition is secondary. It is just a device to create something of which to be aware. The real thing is to be aware. The basic thing is to be aware. If you build a house, the house is secondary. You build it to live in. And if there is no living, and you create a house and live outside, then you are foolish.

Repetition of a certain name or sound is creating a house to live in. It is creating a certain milieu inside. And if you have created it, you can manipulate it more easily than sudden happenings. And by and by you can become accustomed to it, related to it in a deep consciousness – but the real thing, the basic thing, is to be conscious of it.

The science of japa says that when you become a hearer of your own sound, then you have reached. Then you have completed the japa. And there is much in it. When you see a sound, for example, “Rama,” your peripheral apparatus is used in creating it, your vocal apparatus. Or it you create a mental sound, then your mind is used to create it. But when you become alert about it, that alertness is of the center, not of the periphery. If I say “Rama,” this is on the periphery of my being. When I listen to this sound “Rama” inside, that is from my center – because awareness belongs to the center. If you become aware in the center, now you have the light with you. You can dispel unconsciousness.

Mantra can be used as a technique; there are many, many methods. But any method is just an effort towards awareness. You cannot escape awareness. You can start from wherever you like, but awareness is the goal. [. . . .]

These are all methods of will: you will have to do something.

On the path of will, there are only guides. There are not really Gurus, Masters. There are simply guides. They instruct you; you have to do everything. They cannot do. [. . . .]

The last dying words of Buddha to Ananda are, “Ananda, be a lamp unto yourself. Don’t follow me: appa deepo bhava – Be a lamp unto yourself! Don’t follow me.” Ananda was following Buddha continuously for forty years. It was not a small period. For his whole life Ananda had followed devotedly, and no one could say that his devotion was imperfect in any way or incomplete. It was total. But Ananda, the most devoted follower, could not achieve Enlightenment, and the death of Buddha was nearing.

One day Buddha said, “Now, today I am going to leave this body.”

So Ananda began to weep and said, “What will I do now? For forty years I have been following you in every single detail.”

Even Buddha could not say, “You have not followed and that’s why you have not reached.” He had followed and he was sincere, but he was still an ignorant man.

Buddha said, “Unless I die, Ananda, it seems you will not reach.”

“Why?” Ananda asked. Buddha said, “Unless I die, you cannot return to yourself. You are too much attached to me, and I have become the barrier. You have followed me, but you have forgotten yourself completely.”

You can follow a Teacher blindly and still reach nowhere – if you are just following the Teacher according to you. Remember these words: “according to you.” Then you have not surrendered. Surrender means now you are no more there to decide. The Teacher decides. Even if the Teacher is not there, surrender to the cosmic energy. Then the cosmic energy decides. The moment you surrender, your gates are thrown open and the cosmic flood enters you from everywhere and transforms you.

Look at it this way: my house is filled with darkness. I can do two things. Either I have to create light in my house – then I will have to create it; or, I can open my doors and the sun is outside. I just open my doors, and my house becomes a host to the Divine guest, to the sun, to the rays. Then I become receptive and the darkness disappears.

On the path of will, you have to create the light. On the path of surrender, light is there – you have just to be open. But when the house is dark and when everywhere there is darkness, one fears to open doors – one fears even more. Who knows whether light will enter or whether thieves will come in? So you lock up. You close every possibility so that nothing enters in. That is the situation.

Either create light by yourself: then the darkness disappears. Or use the cosmic light: that is always there. Then open yourself! Be vulnerable! Then don’t depend on anyone. Then be ready, whatsoever happens. If you are ready no matter what may happen, then darkness itself becomes light. With that readiness, nothing can remain dark. That very readiness transforms you totally.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1, Discourse #18, Q1

For a related post see Path of Will or Path of Surrender.

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Obeying the Warrior Within – Osho

These are the sutras achieved by ultimate wisdom. They are deep and sometimes very complex, even contradictory, but they are the ultimate flowering of wisdom.

When a Buddha becomes a Buddha or a Christ becomes a Christ, these sutras are revealed. If you can understand them, even understanding will transform you. If you can feel the reality hidden in them, you will be a different man altogether. So try to understand them very deeply.

The first sutra:

Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior.

He is thyself, yet thou art but finite and liable to error. He is eternal and is sure. He is eternal truth. When once he has entered thee and become thy warrior, he will never utterly desert thee, and at the day of the great peace he will become one with thee.

Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior. We are in a constant fight with ourselves. The struggle continues night and day. The whole life is a battlefield, but you reach nowhere. You are neither defeated totally nor are you victorious. The struggle continues, and life energy is dissipated unnecessarily. You just waste yourself and your existence. What is the cause? Why are you never victorious? Why does the struggle never end?

You fight with sex, you fight with anger, you fight with greed. You fight with everything, but you still remain in the grip of those things you are fighting. The more you fight sex, the more you are in its grip and the more you feel you have to fight more. It is a vicious circle. You fight more and then sex becomes more attractive; sex becomes more magnetic. You take many decisions not to be angry, but every decision is a failure. And the total result is this: that in the end you feel you are guilty, inferior; in the end you feel that you are not capable of doing anything, you feel an inner defeat.

This has happened to the whole of humanity. Humanity is so sad now not because of anything else that has happened in this age but only because so many ages of religious fight, so many centuries of continuous religious struggle, have proven to the human mind that nothing can be achieved. The human mind feels a deep failure. This creates sadness and depression.

Hope has become hopeless. There seems to be no way out of it. You can struggle, but everything is futile, a wastage; no one achieves anything. This has happened not because the human mind is not capable of victory. This has happened because the base of the struggle is wrong, the whole effort of the struggle is wrong. Why? Because you are fighting with yourself. How can you win?

If I create a conflict between my two hands, left and right, I can go on fighting but there will be no victory and no defeat, because both hands belong to me. The urge for sex belongs to me and the urge to go beyond sex also belongs to me; they are both my hands. I can go on fighting, I can go on changing from one to the other – sometimes siding with the right hand, sometimes with the left – but nothing is going to happen because I am within both. How can there be defeat or victory? For defeat and victory at least two are needed and I am alone, fighting with myself. This whole fight is a shadow fight, nonsense.

Then what to do? This sutra gives you the key: Stand aside in the coming battle and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior. Stand aside. Be a witness.

Remember this word ‘witness’. This is one of the key words in the search for spirituality. If you can understand this word and practice it, you don’t need anything else. Even this one key will open all the doors of paradise. This is a master key. Any lock can be opened by it. What does it mean to stand aside?

When sex arises in you, you get identified with it. Then, when you have moved through the sex act, depression sets in, because you hoped so much and nothing has happened. You longed too much, you expected too much, and nothing has happened. The whole thing has just been a fraud. You feel betrayed, deceived. Then repentance sets in and you start thinking in anti-sex terms. You start thinking how to be brahmacharya, how to be a celibate. You think in terms of how to be a monk; you go against sex. Then you get identified with that ‘anti’ attitude.

Witnessing means that when sex arises, stand aside and look at it. Don’t get identified. Don’t say, “I have become sex.” Say, “Sexual desire has arisen in me. Now I must observe it.” Don’t be for it and don’t be against it. Remain quiet and calm – just an observer.

That doesn’t mean to suppress it, because suppression will not allow you to know what it is. Don’t suppress it. Suppression means that you are identified with the ‘anti’ attitude. Remember this: if you suppress, you are identified with the ’anti’ attitude. Don’t suppress, don’t get identified. Allow it to happen. Don’t be afraid; just wait and watch.

Move in the sex act but with a watchful eye, knowing well what is happening and allowing it to happen. Not disturbing it, not suppressing it – allowing it to become manifest in its totality, but standing aside as if you are watching someone else.

The act will move to its peak. Go with it, but always standing by the side. Know whatsoever is happening in detail. Be alert; don’t lose awareness. Then, from the peak, you will start falling down and the ‘anti’ attitude will set in. Be alert again. Don’t get identified with the ’anti’ attitude. Look at what is happening: the wave has gone up to a peak; now the wave is falling down. Sex is the wave arising. brahmacharya, the ‘anti’ attitude toward sex, is the wave falling down.

Be aware, be alert. Don’t be for or against; don’t condemn; don’t make any judgement. Don’t be a judge; just be a witness. Don’t say, “This is good. That is bad.” Don’t say anything. Just be alert and watch what is happening. Be true to the facts; don’t give any interpretation. That’s what witnessing means.

If you can be a witness to sex, and to the anti-sex attitude, you will come to a great understanding. That understanding will tell you that sex and anti-sex are two poles of one wave. They are not really opposite to one another. They are just the rising and falling down of the same wave. They are one, so there is nothing to choose. If you choose one you have already chosen the other, because it is part of it, the hidden part of it. If you choose one you have already chosen the other because the other cannot be separated from it. They are one, so there is no choice. Then, choicelessness happens to you.

That choicelessness is the path of victory. Now you don’t choose; there is nothing to choose. And a miracle happens: when you don’t choose, both fall down. Sex and brahmacharya both disappear and for the first time you are not in their clutches, for the first time you are not in the hold of the opposites.

Witnessing is the beginning, and witnessing is the end. The first step and the last step are one. Witnessing is the means and witnessing is the goal. Then the fight goes on, but you are not the warrior. Now the fighting is on a different level. What is that level?

Now, sex and anti-sex are both present to you simultaneously. This simultaneous presence of the opposites is the fight. They fight with each other, and you remain a witness. Because they are opposites, anti-poles, they destroy each other completely and both disappear. They are of the same strength and the same energy. They cut each other, they negate each other.

This is the fight. But you are not the warrior; you are just a witness. You are just looking from without: a watcher on the hills. Down in the valley the fight will go on, but now you are just a watcher on the tower. You just look down and you know they are fighting; the opposites are fighting. But they negate each other, because they are of the same strength.

Remember this: only a very deeply sexual person can become a brahmacharya. Much sexual desire can be converted into brahmacharya. If you are just ordinarily sexual you cannot become a brahmacharya because to become a brahmacharya much energy is needed. And the opposite energies are always equivalent, so only very deeply sexual persons become brahmacharyas. Ordinary persons, with ordinary, natural sex, never move to that extreme. They cannot. The energy to move comes from sex. Opposite energies are equivalent.

You need not fight; you need not take part from this side or that side. That is the way of defeat. Just remain aside, get out of the circle – be a witness.

It is difficult, because the mind wants to choose; the mind always chooses. Mind is the chooser because, without choosing, there will be no mind; you will fall out of the mind. That’s why it is so difficult not to choose.

Even what I am saying . . . Many of you may choose to follow what I am saying, but you will choose to do so for a reason. People come to me and when I say, “Be a witness,” they immediately ask, “If I become a witness will sexuality disappear?” Then they cannot become a witness because they have already chosen. They ask, “Will sexuality disappear if I become a witness?” They are even ready to become a witness if sexuality will disappear!

But they have made a choice. They have decided that sexuality is bad and brahmacharya is good. They ask me, “If I become a witness will I become brahmacharya, will I become celibate?” They are missing the whole point. I am saying, “Don’t choose,” and they have already chosen. They want to use witnessing as an instrument for their choice. But you cannot use witnessing that way.

One man came to me. He was a seeker, a serious seeker. But stupid. There are many stupid seekers: serious. And when I say stupid I mean this: they can’t understand what they are doing.

The man was suffering from sex. Everyone is suffering because of sex. The suffering has gone so deep that you don’t only suffer because of your own sexuality; you suffer because of others’ sexuality also. This seems to be madness. You suffer because of your own sexuality and you suffer because of others’ sexuality also, because of what others are doing.

Enough misery can be created by your own sexuality. Why be concerned with others? But that misery doesn’t seem to be enough for you so you go on collecting what others are doing: who is doing wrong and who is being good. Who are you to decide? From where have you been given the right? Who are you to become a policeman?

The man who came to see me was a policeman. He was suffering because of what everyone else was doing. But I told him, “Don’t be worried about others. The real problem must be within you. You have not yet come to terms with your sexuality, that is the problem. Why suffer because of others? Why create other problems? Just to escape from your own problems? Just to be occupied? Who has appointed you to be a policeman? Why waste your life? You must be deeply sex-obsessed; that’s why you are concerned with others.”

So he said, “You have touched the right wound. I am now sixty-five, and I am still suffering. As I become older, I suffer more. It seems that sexuality is growing with my age. The energy is less, but the sexuality is more. As death is coming near, I feel to be more and more sexual. My whole mind, for twenty-four hours, is obsessed with sex.”

I told him, “You have been fighting sex continuously.” He is a great seeker. He has remained with so many saints, so many gurus. I told him, “They have destroyed you. You have reached nowhere. Whatsoever you have been doing is wrong. Now, don’t fight sex anymore.”

The man became afraid. He said, “I have been fighting sex. And this is the reason: even with fighting I am so sexual. Now you say, ‘Don’t fight it!’ Then I will become completely mad.”

So I told him, “You have tried fighting. Now try the other. You have reached nowhere. Now, don’t fight!”

“Then what,” he asked, “am I supposed to do?”

I told him, “Be a witness.”

He asked, “Will sexuality disappear then?”

I told him, “If you become a witness with a partisan view – for brahmacharya, against sex – you cannot become a witness. And if you cannot become a witness, sexuality cannot disappear. Become a witness. Sexuality will disappear, but remember, brahmacharya will also disappear with it.” There is no need of brahmacharya when sexuality disappears. It is part of the same game. When the disease has disappeared, what is the use of the medicine? You will throw the medicine with the disease. So I told him, “Brahmacharya will also disappear. But remember not to choose.”

He said, “I will try.”

After three months – I told him to come back after three months – he came and he said, “But sex has not yet disappeared.” This is what I call stupidity. “Sex has not yet disappeared, and I have been practicing witnessing for three months.”

The unconscious choice remains: sex must disappear. Then you cannot be a witness. Witnessing means no choice, choiceless awareness. This is one of the most fundamental keys for all the diseases of the human mind. If you can become a witness, the opposites fight against each other, kill each other, and both are dead, both disappear. But if you choose one thing over the other, you cannot be a witness.

The second sutra:

Look for the warrior and let him fight in thee.

. . . Look for him, else in the fever and hurry of the fight thou mayest pass him; and he will not know thee unless thou knowest him. If thy cry meets his listening ear, then will he fight in thee and fill the dull void within.

Look for the warrior and let him fight in thee. Don’t be the warrior; there is no need. The warrior is this phenomenon: presenting to your consciousness both of the opposites simultaneously.

Ordinarily, only one is present. When sex is present? you are not thinking of brahmacharya. When brahmacharya is present, you are not thinking of sex. One is present and the other is hidden. This is the misery.

Bring out the other simultaneously and this will become the warrior for you. Bring them out simultaneously. When you are filled with anger, bring in repentance immediately. You always repent – but later on. When you are angry, you are angry. When the anger has done its devastation, then repentance comes in and you start taking oaths that you are not going to be angry again. But the anger and the repentance never meet. Allow the opposites to meet. They will negate each other.

If you go on moving from one opposite to another, you will never be victorious. You have wasted many lives like this, and you can waste infinite lives. But this is the secret: bring the opposites out simultaneously; allow them to be present before you simultaneously. Don’t follow one. If you follow one, the other is waiting for you. When you are bored, when you get fed up with one, the other will catch hold of you.

If the opposites cannot meet, they cannot negate each other. You need not do anything. This is the miracle; this is the inner chemistry. Bring the opposites together and just watch them. They will fight; allow them to fight. You need not get involved in it; just remain by the side. They will disappear together. Once they are present together, they will not persist; both will disappear.

So a Mahavir is not a brahmachari. Sex and brahmacharya have both disappeared. He is just innocent; he’s just like a child. A Buddha has not become nonangry; anger and non-anger both have disappeared. He is innocent; both are not there. A Krishna is neither a sansari nor a sannyasi; he neither belongs to the world nor belongs to the other anti-world of renunciation. Both have disappeared; he is innocent. The perfection, the wholeness of consciousness, is in innocence.

And when I use the word ‘innocence’ I mean absence of the opposites. Absence of the opposites is the purity. If you have chosen one, you are not pure. The other is hidden in the unconscious; both are there.

Both will be there if one is there. The other cannot be separated; it can only be hidden. And if the one is not there, the other cannot be there. Both will disappear; the whole field of opposites disappears. Then you are innocent. That innocence is liberation, that innocence is divine, that innocence is nirvana.

The third sutra:

Take his orders for battle and obey them.

Obey him not as though he were a general but as though he were thyself, and his spoken words were the utterance of thy secret desires, for he is thyself, yet infinitely wiser and stronger than thyself.

Find out the witness and then obey him. First find the witness and then obey him, because to find the witness means to find one’s own innermost core.

We live on two layers, two levels. One is the periphery: the world of action. The other is the inner being, the world of no-action: the world of existence, not of doing.

All that we do is on the periphery and all that we are is at the center. We have to continuously move from the center to the periphery to do some thing. Whenever you are doing something, you are on the periphery. Whatsoever you are doing, you are on the periphery. When you are non-doing, not doing anything, then you are at the center.

Witnessing is a non-act. Meditation is a non-act.

We are doing meditation here. For thirty minutes you are on the periphery doing something: breathing, catharsis, the hoo mantra. You are doing something; you are on the periphery. When I suddenly say, “Stop!” I mean: now be in the non-act, in non-doing. When you suddenly stop you are thrown from the periphery to the being, to the innermost center, because when you are not doing anything, you are not needed on the periphery. You need to be on the periphery only while you are doing something. Now you are thrown back to your center. That center is your witness.

Once you know this center, once you recognize this center, once you have felt this center – follow the orders. You will be directed; you have found your master. Now follow whatsoever is said to you from the center and don’t listen to the periphery. The periphery is cultivated by others and your center is untouched, virgin; it is from the divine.

The periphery comes from the society. That’s why we say that a sannyasin goes beyond society. Not against society, beyond society. Now he follows his own innermost center; he’s not following anyone else. All orders from others are meaningless now.

You have found your own inner being, and now that being can direct you. That being is infinitely stronger and wiser than thyself. The ‘you’ on the periphery is a weakling; the ‘you’ at the center is infinitely potent. The ‘you’ on the periphery is just a worldly thing; the ’you’ at the center is God himself.

But first find out:

Jesus has said, “First seek ye the kingdom of God. Then all else will follow.” Don’t bother about other things. First find out the innermost core of the kingdom of God. Then you need not worry about anything; all else will follow.

Just follow the inner voice. But how? You don’t know what the inner voice is, you don’t know what the inner is. Society has confused you deeply. It goes on saying that its own voice is your inner voice. The society has placed many voices in you just to control you from within.

It is a social need. Society controls you in two ways. One, by outer arrangements: the policeman on the street, the court, the judge, the law, the government. This is the outer arrangement, but it is not enough. You can deceive the law, you can manipulate the court. And the policeman, of course, is just another human being. So that arrangement is not enough. You can do whatsoever you like and you can play tricks with the law; you can find loopholes because human-made laws can be violated by other humans very easily. All that is needed is more intelligence, more intelligence than the law makers. Then you can deceive it. So society cannot rely on the outer law because there are intelligent people, more intelligent that law-makers. They will find loopholes, and they will be illegal in a legal way, and you cannot do anything. And the more laws you create, the more loopholes.

Then society tries another way – and that is a more effective thing. It creates a conscience in you: the inner policeman, the inner court. It gives you a feeling “This is wrong” – and from the very childhood it goes on reinforcing it: “This is wrong. Don’t do this. Don’t be a thief. Don’t deceive your wife. Don’t love another’s wife,” it goes on saying.

This becomes an inner conditioning, so whenever you feel an attraction toward another’s wife, the inner voice . . . This is not the inner voice. This is society’s voice playing within you. The voice comes: “This is wrong, this is a sin!” and you start trembling. This is the social trick: the policeman outside and the policeman within.

I am not saying to and love someone’s wife – I am not saying that. I am simply saying that this is a social mechanism, a social device to make you a slave through yourself. And it is more successful, remember. It is more successful.

Today’s world has become less moral because this “inner voice” is not so strong; society has become incapable of reinforcing it. The outer law is greater, more complex, but the inner law has weakened for many reasons: when people, societies lived aloof and along it was easy to create the inner conscience. Now, the whole earth has become a village, with many societies, many inner voices conflicting. Now no one can rely on . . . Every child knows that whatsoever you say is “good” in India is “bad” in Pakistan.

What is good for a Hindu may not be good for a Jain. No matter what you say is true, the contradictory is also true somewhere; it is not absolute. Now we have become aware of the whole complexity of the human conscience, we know that your conscience is just a social product.

So many societies exist together that the hold has become weak. Human societies are less moralistic now because the inner policeman is dead, almost dead. You know that what it says means nothing: don’t bother about it. Just observe the outer law . . . and try to find a way around it. What I’m saying is that the voice of the inner policeman is not your voice. Find out the witness. Only then will you find out the inner voice.

The inner voice will direct you. Its directions will be absolutely different from what society says – absolutely different. But for the first time you will become religious, not simply moral. You will be moral in a much deeper sense.

Morality will not be a duty; it will not be something imposed upon you. It will not be a burden; it will be spontaneous. You will be good, naturally good. You will not become a thief – not because society says, “Don’t be a thief,” but because you cannot be. You will not kill because it is impossible. You love life so much now that violence becomes impossible. It is not a moral code; it is an inner direction.

You affirm life, you revere life. A deep reverence comes to you, and through that reverence everything follows. That is what Jesus says. “Find out the kingdom of God first, and then everything will follow.”

Find the inner voice, and then everything will follow.

-Osho

From The New Alchemy: to Turn You On, Discourse #10

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Inscape – The Ultimate Annihilation – Osho

Apparently sex was used by some Zen masters – for example, Ikkyu – as a way to transform energy. However, in no translation to date does evidence of this appear. It seems disciples excluded from their records about their master any mention of sex, for fear that their master would be misunderstood. Would you like to comment?

It is a long story . . .

Zen has moved from one country to another country, from one climate to another climate. It was born in India.

Hinduism, as such, in its early stages, was very natural, very existential. It had no taboos about sex, its seers and saints had wives. Celibacy was not an imposition; it came on its own accord through the natural experience of sex. Hinduism in its early stages was a very natural, very existential approach – almost like Zen.

But then there was another tradition which is represented by Jainism. It is a very puzzling question, and historians are almost silent, because nobody wants to stir any controversy. It is left to me to create all kinds of controversies.

Jainism is not a part of Hinduism; it is far more ancient than Hinduism. […]

And Jainism has never indicated that it belongs to Hinduism. Its whole approach is different. […]

Jainism has nothing in common with Hinduism. Its language is different, its conception about the world is different, it has no God. It does not have any yoga system, it does not have any Tantra. It is absolutely against sex, it is repressive of sex. But this repressive tradition of Jainism influenced the whole of India.

Of course, their saints looked far more deeply holy than the Hindu saints who were married, who had children. And not only children, but they were allowed to have concubines. These saints were just householders and lived in the forests, they had all the possessions that anybody can have. In fact, they had more possessions than ordinary people, because thousands of disciples brought presents to them. Each seer had become almost a university in himself. Around him thrived hundreds of teachers, disciples, visitors. But compared to the Jaina saint, these Hindu saints looked very ordinary.

Because of this comparison, Hinduism also became contaminated with the idea of repression of sex. Otherwise, you can see beautiful statues of men and women in deep embrace, in different postures even in the temples in Khajuraho, in Konarak, in Puri. Such beautiful sculpture you cannot find anywhere else. These temples were Hindu. Of course, sex was accepted by the Hindus – not only accepted, but a system of transforming the sexual energy, Tantra, was developed by the Hindu saints.

Jainism has remained a very small current, but very influential. It is one of the very important things to understand: the more miserable your saint, the holier he seems. If the saint is happy, joyous, loves life, and enjoys everything that existence allows him, you cannot think of him as very holy. To be holy, one has to be miserable.

In short, pleasure in any direction is condemned. Jaina saints looked more saintly, more holy, and Hindus felt that they had to change – and by and by, they did change, but not consciously. They started respecting the repressed person. Tantra became taboo, and Hindus became completely disoriented from their own sources. It happened again when Christianity came, and Hindus became even more repressed.

Gautam Buddha is the original source of Zen. He was born into a Hindu family, but he lived a very different life than is possible for ordinary people. From his very childhood he was allowed everything that he wanted; he was kept surrounded by beautiful girls; he was married. His whole life up to the age of twenty-nine years was wrapped in pleasure, in dancing, in music, in women, in wine, because the astrologers had predicted that this boy either would become a great saint or would become a great conqueror of the world.

And of course, his father was concerned and worried – he did not want him to become a saint. He was his only son, and he wanted him to become a world conqueror. He asked the astrologers how to prevent him from becoming a saint. Those idiots advised that he should be surrounded with pleasure: “Don’t let him know that there is misery. Don’t let him know that there is sickness, old age, death. Don’t let him know at all about these things. Just let him be drowned in music, in dancing, surrounded by beautiful girls. Make three palaces in different places for different seasons: a cooler place when it is summer, and a warmer place when it is winter . . . ”

And the father followed all the instructions of all those so-called wise men; in fact, their advice made him a saint. Twenty-nine years of continuous luxury – he became fed up. And suddenly, when he saw one sick man, it was a shock, because for twenty-nine years he had been kept unaware of sickness, old age, or death. And when he saw these things… how long can you prevent? Even twenty-nine years must have been very difficult for the father to manage him not to see a flower dying, or a pale leaf falling from the tree. In the night, the garden had to be cleaned of all dead flowers, dead leaves. Gautam Buddha should not know that there was something like an ending.

But this created exactly the situation in which he became first, exhausted, bored . . . so many beautiful women. By the age of twenty-nine years, he became as old as a man cannot experience in three hundred years. In twenty-nine years, he saw everything of luxury, of sex, of licentiousness. And when he suddenly came to know old age, and saw the body of a dead man being carried, he was shocked. He would not have been shocked if from the very beginning he had known that people become old – it is natural. These twenty-nine years of protection proved dangerous. When he saw the dead man, he inquired of his charioteer, “What has happened to this man?”

The charioteer said, “I am not allowed . . . in fact, the whole city has been told that you are passing by this road, so no old man, no sick man, no dead man, should be allowed on this path. How he has entered . . . but I cannot be untruthful, he is dead.”

And the second question immediately was, “Is the same going to happen to me?” And the charioteer said, “I don’t want to say it, but the truth is, it happens to all. Nobody is an exception.”

And just then he saw a sannyasin in orange robes. He asked, “What kind of man is this, and what kind of uniform . . . ?”

The charioteer said to him, “This man is in search of the eternal. He has become aware that this life is momentary, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. Hence, he has started a search to see whether there is something inside him which will survive even death, or if there is nothing. He is an inquirer.”

Gautam Buddha was going to inaugurate the annual festival of youth. He told the charioteer, “Take me back home. I am no longer interested in the festival. I have been cheated. For twenty-nine years I have not been allowed to know the truth.”

That very night he escaped from the house. And because he was bored and fed up, those who followed him after his enlightenment obviously thought that sex was dangerous because it keeps you attached to the world. Naturally those who followed Gautam Buddha became escapists. For Buddha it was right, it was not an escape; it was simply getting out of the prison. But for others, it was not getting out of the prison. They had not even lived in the prison, they did not know the prison, they had not explored the prison. It had not come to their consciousness that it was a bondage. They simply followed Gautam Buddha. For them, sex became repressive, pleasure became contaminated.

But fortunately, Bodhidharma took Gautam Buddha’s message to China. That was a different climate. Tao was the climate in China, and Tao is very life affirmative. So in China, a new development happened: the meeting of Bodhidharma and Tao, a totally new concept. Zen is not just Buddhism; in fact, the orthodox Buddhists don’t accept Zen even as Buddhism, and they are right. Zen is a crossbreed between Gautam Buddha’s insight and Lao Tzu’s realization, the meeting of Buddha’s approach, his meditation, and Tao’s naturalness.

In Tao, sex is not a taboo; Tao has its own Tantra. The energy of sex has not to be destroyed or repressed, it is not your enemy. It can be transformed, it can become a great help in the search of your ultimateness. So in Zen, the idea of celibacy was dropped. There was no insistence on it, it was your choice, because the question is meditation. If you can meditate and live your life in a natural way, it is acceptable to Tao.

And then another transformation happened: Zen reached from China to Japan, where Shinto, the native religion, was very natural. There it became absolutely affirmative; hence it is not even talked about. There is no need, it is not a question.

You are asking, “Apparently sex was used by some Zen masters – for example, Ikkyu – as a way to transform energy. However, in no translation to date does evidence of this appear.” That does not mean that sex was a taboo. It was so natural that there was no need to discuss it. You don’t discuss urination. That does not mean you have stopped urinating. You start discussing things only when you start going against nature. If you are natural, there is nothing to discuss.

Life is to live, not to discuss.

Live as deeply and intensely as possible.

Ikkyu is certainly known to have used Tantra as a way of transformation. The sexual energy is nothing but your very life energy, it is only the name. You can call it sex energy, but by it ‘sex’, it does not become different, it is life energy. And it is better to call it life energy, because that is a wider term, more inclusive, more comprehensive. When you are going deeper into your center, that experience can be explained in many ways. It can be explained the way Hindus have explained it: it is realization of the ultimate, brahmabodh. But Brahma is not a person. The word is dangerous; it gives an idea as if we are talking about a person.

Brahma is simply the whole energy of the existence.

Jainas will call it self-realization, atmabodh, but their self is not synonymous with the ego. It is synonymous with Brahma. You are no more – in your self-realization you are no more. Buddha and Mahavira were contemporaries, and Buddha insisted again and again, that if you are no more, then why do you call it self-realization? That gives a very distorted description. Call it no-self realization. But Mahavira has his own reasons not to call it no-self realization – people are afraid of no-self realization; if you are going to be nothing, then it is better to remain something. And Mahavira knew that it does not matter whether you call it self-realization or not, you are going to disappear. But keep a positive word which is more attractive.

I can see Mahavira’s compassion in it, but I also can see Buddha’s truthfulness. He says, “If it is really no-self realization, then call it what it is. Don’t deceive people.”

Tantra will call it samadhi.

The names are different, but it is exactly life, pure life without any contamination. Once you reach to your center you can think in different categories. You can use the yoga method, then you can say this is the very center of your being: sambodhi. You can use the Tantra method, then you can say this is the center of your sex energy. And sex energy in Tantra is equivalent to life energy. These words have unnecessarily kept people discussing and discussing.

The reality is one. It is better to experience it.

Zen masters don’t talk about it for the simple reason Zen is a very natural phenomenon. It is not anti-life; it is not escapist. But most of the Zen masters have left their household life. Tired, seeing no point in the marketplace, they moved to the mountains. It was not against the marketplace, it was simply that the mountains were more silent, more peaceful. They allowed you to be yourself without any interference.

Sex is not mentioned in the records, for the simple reason that there is no reason to record it, it is accepted. If one has lived it, and there comes a time when you have outgrown it, then there is no point to go on and on, tired and disgusted. While it is beautiful, enjoy, and when it becomes a tiring, disgusting phenomenon, then just leave it for others. But there is no reason to condemn it.

A natural person simply passes beyond stages without condemnation. He has lived life, he has known life, now he wants to know something more. He wants to know something of the eternal. He has reproduced children, now he wants to know who he is in his innermost core. He has lived the world of the outside, he has been a Zorba. Now a moment comes of turning in. The outside reality has been explored without any inhibition, then you will naturally one day turn inwards.

It is the inhibition, the repressive mentality, that goes on forcing you to think of sex, because you have never lived it. Your Christianity, your Jainism, did not allow it, or allowed it and then created guilt in you that you were doing something which should not be done. Then you are living halfheartedly.

And when a thing is lived halfheartedly you never transcend, you never go beyond it. Dance to the moment when you stop automatically.

Live everything in life so you can transcend joyfully without any guilt. That is difficult for people who have been programmed with taboos: sex should not even be mentioned; death should not be mentioned either.

Sex and death are the two points: one is the beginning, the other is the end. People are kept unaware of both. About sex, it is dirty; about death, it is dangerous and gloomy . . . don’t talk about it. It is always somebody else who dies, don’t be worried. But in reality, you are born out of sex, and you are going to die. That which is born out of sex is going to disappear in death. Sex and death are the two points of the same energy. That which appears in sex, disappears in death. And both have to be understood, because both are the most important points in your life, and both have to be accepted and lived.

But religions like Christianity and Jainism are very repressive. Their very repression makes people guilty, sinners. They cannot live their life with totality, intensity, and they cannot meditate, because meditation’s first condition is to be total, to be total in everything. Then everything becomes meditation. Even making love, if you are total, then it becomes a meditation.

My own understanding about meditation is that in the beginning it must have happened to someone while making love, because that seems to be the only thing in which you can come to such a totality that time stops, mind stops, and everything becomes absolutely silent.

But that silence can be created by meditation also. The secret is known through sex, that if there is no time and no mind, you have entered into the ultimate. Through sex you enter for a single moment, and you fall back into the temporary. Through meditation you can remain in the ultimate, twenty-four hours around the clock, in an orgasmic joy. Your every moment becomes a dance. Knowing that you are not, there is nothing to fear.

Knowing that you are the whole, there is nothing to lose.

Sex is not talked about by Zen masters, simply because it is taken for granted.

One of our sannyasins has been working with John Stevens, author of One Robe, One Bowl.

He claims to have found ancient manuscripts never before published, in which Zen masters speak of sex as a tool for transformation. He has compiled a book of this material, which he is calling Lust for Zen. He anticipates that he is going to “upset Buddhists everywhere” by publishing this material.

Do it quickly, because without upsetting, it is very difficult to bring people to come to a settling. First upset, only then can they settle down in a zazen.

But there is nothing upsetting to the real Zen masters; only Buddhists may be upset. The Buddhists of India will be upset, because they have borrowed the sex-repressive idea from Jainism, from Hinduism, and from Buddha’s own experience.

But you cannot afford Buddha’s experience, because he was first a Zorba. Even Zorba was not such a Zorba as Buddha. His father found as many beautiful girls as possible from his whole kingdom . . . and he became tired.

One night after much drinking and dancing, everybody had fallen asleep. He looked around – those beautiful faces… Foam was falling from their mouths, their makeup was upset, their hairdo was not in the right place . . . and it was disgusting. But that kind of experience is not available to everybody.

It should be available to everybody, then at the age of thirty everybody is going to escape from the world. But this escape will not be out of fear.

This escape needs a new name. It is inscape. One has lived outside, now one wants to live inside. One is bored of repetition, but because of the guilty, life-negative religions predominating over humanity, nobody ever comes to meditation through his love life. Nobody comes to an orgasmic experience where time stops, where mind stops, where suddenly a new sky opens its doors.

Tantra has used the method in India. And in China, Tao has used its own different technique of Tantra to bring people through sexual experience to a meditative state. But it is not a necessity that you should come to a meditative state through sexual experience. You can come by the direct route, by the immediate . . . this very moment, through meditation.

Sex is a long way. Nothing is wrong if somebody chooses the long way; if he enjoys the journey, there is no harm. But if somebody wants a shortcut, then meditation is available as a shortcut. It is really reaching to the same experience, but by a shortcut.

And as far as my sannyasins are concerned, there is no question of renouncing anything unless something renounces you. Many things will renounce you. By and by, you will start seeing – “Why go on playing these games . . . ?” Sooner or later, you will be sitting silently, doing nothing, rejoicing in the ultimate annihilation, disappearing into the ocean, losing all your boundaries.

[…]

The sutra:

Beloved Osho,

A monk asked Daiten, a disciple of Sekito, “How is it when one meets the person-in-there?”

Daiten replied, “The person is not in there anymore.”

When you go in, you don’t meet any person, you simply meet the whole; you simply meet the impersonal existence. You are only on the surface; once you go deeper you disappear. The deeper you go, the less you are. And when you are not, then only have you touched the real depth.

You don’t meet any person, you simply meet the impersonal existence.

Daiten was right when he said, “The person is not in there anymore if you go in.” It is only when you don’t go in . . . it is a conception, an idea. If you remain in the mind, you remain a person. The moment you go beyond the mind, the person starts melting. There comes a point you are no more, everything is – you have become one with the whole.

The monk asked, “What is ‘in there’? If there is no person, then who is there?”

Mind cannot conceive of nothingness; it can only conceive of something limited. If the person is not there, then who is there? God is there?

Buddha is reported to have said, “If you meet me in you, immediately kill, immediately cut my head! Because you have loved me, when you meditate, the image of your master may come to you. It is just an image, don’t let that image prevent you from meeting the whole. Cut the head.”

The monk asked, “What is ‘in there’?”

Daiten said, “Don’t ask that question. That is the only question that cannot be answered. You better go in and see who is there.”

Daiten is a very clear master. Without much philosophy he simply says, “Don’t ask that question. Simply go in and see.”

The monk then asked, “In the ocean of misery, the waves are deep. With what can we make a boat?”

Daiten replied, “Make a boat with wood.”

The monk said, “If we do, can we go across the ocean?”

Daiten replied, “The blind are still blind, the dumb are still dumb.”

He is showing his frustration. This monk cannot understand. You don’t have to go to the other shore of the ocean, you have to melt in the ocean. You don’t need a boat for melting. The other shore will be just like this shore. You can change places, but that is not going to change your inner space.

Hence, he said, “Whatever the masters say, people still remain blind and still are dumb.” They don’t change. They go on listening. If it is a philosophy, they can understand it, but if it is an existential experiment, they simply remain blind, deaf and dumb.

Going in is not a philosophical question. Who is there inside you? What is the point of asking when the inside is yours? Go in and see who is there. You will not find any person. You will find a pure nothingness, an existential grace, a beauty, a song without sounds, a great drunkenness, a tremendous ecstasy. You will not find any person, just experiences, but those experiences are going to transform you. Those experiences are going to change your individuality, because you will now know there is absolute silence inside, no individuality.

Then, if somebody insults you, you will not feel insulted, because you don’t exist. He is throwing stones at nothing. Then even in your ordinary life you will function like a buddha – aware, alert, compassionate.

On another occasion a monk from Korea came to see Daiten. When the monk unrolled the sitting mat to make a bow, Daiten said, “Before you leave your country, get the single phrase!”

The monk had no answer. He could not understand what Daiten was saying to him. He is saying, “Before you leave your country, get the single phrase!” By “country” he does not mean Korea. By country he is meaning, before you go from your personality, the boundary that you have lived in, get one phrase. What is that phrase?

Rather than asking, the monk had no answer. He could not understand Daiten. That single phrase is zazen. Before you leave your personality and your individuality and your mind, remember to sit silently without asking any question, and without creating any hallucination, and without creating any dream.

Just get one thing: sitting silently.

In Japanese it is one word: zazen.

Daiten then came forward and said, “If you ask about the single phrase here,

I will answer with two phrases.”

He is saying that if you don’t go in by yourself, and somebody else has to show you the way, the oneness of inside becomes two, a duality of the mind. Anything said is dual; only the unsaid is non-dual.

You say day and it includes night; you say life and it includes death. You say man and it includes woman.

You say this – and it includes that.

You cannot say anything without implying its opposite. But inside, you can experience oneness without any duality – a pure silence not against sound, a beauty not against ugliness, a truth not against lies.

The function of the master is not to tell you what is in, but to lead you inwards, force you inwards. All that is said is in the service of that which cannot be said.

Basho wrote:

The wild heron
Sleeping –
Undisturbed nobility.

Have you seen a wild heron sleeping? Basho says, “undisturbed nobility.” That’s what you are when silence happens to you – an undisturbed nobility. Suddenly you become an emperor. The insight gives you the whole universe. It takes away all that is false, and it gives you all that is truth, all that is beauty, all that is grace, all that is sheer joy.

A man like Basho – a man of deep meditation – will start seeing it everywhere. Even in a heron sleeping, he will see an undisturbed nobility. In a wild bird on the wing, he will see immense freedom.

In the sky, he will see his own nothingness.

He will start having a new sight about everything – even a wildflower will become more beautiful.

Jesus says, “Look at the wild lilies in the field. They are more beautiful than even Solomon the emperor was in all his splendor.”

Solomon was an ancient Jewish king of great beauty, and of great understanding. In the whole of the Holy Bible, only his song, Solomon’s Song, has some truth; otherwise, everything is ordinary. But Jesus says, “These wild lilies are more beautiful even than the splendor of the great King Solomon.”

To the man of meditation, everything becomes totally new and fresh, young, alive. He radiates love and compassion and joy.

-Osho

From The Zen Manifesto: Freedom from Oneself, Discourse #8

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Neither Licentiousness nor Repression – Osho

Do you profess licentiousness in life?

I don’t profess anything. I simply clarify things to you, I don’t profess. I am not giving you any ideology; I am only giving you insight. Take note of the difference. An ideology has to be professed; an insight has to be imparted. I simply make things clear to you, I simply help you to clarify things. I am not giving you a dogma. I am not giving you a theory that will solve all your problems – there is none. I am simply telling you: Open your eyes, become more aware. And that awareness will help you in every kind of difficulty, in every kind of problem. That awareness will be like a light in the dark night. And wherever you go that light will remain with you, you will be able to see. I don’t give you a theory. You have depended too much on theories. Theories are cheap because they don’t require any transformation on your part. Dogmas are very easy to accept. Then you have an idea which you go on trying to fit everywhere in your life, and you start depending on the idea.

That dependence on the idea makes you more and more blind. If you are a Christian, you are blind, if you are a Hindu you are blind, if you believe in any dogma you are blind. Because only blind people believe.

A blind man believes in light. But a man who has eyes, he does not believe in light, there is no need.

He knows light – why should he believe? You don’t believe in light, you don’t believe in the sun, you don’t believe in these trees, you know. But a blind man, he believes that trees are green, that the rainbow has seven colors, that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, that there are colors in the world. A deaf man believes in sounds; you don’t believe. Belief is an ugly word.

I help you to see. That’s what Buddha says: ‘Ihi passika – Come and see.’ You see the difference? Jesus says ‘Come and follow me.’ Buddha says ‘Come and see.’ Both are enlightened – but Jesus must be talking to a very low level of consciousness, he has to say ‘Come and follow me.’ ‘Follow me’ means believe. Buddha must be talking to highly evolved conscious people, he says ‘Come and see.’ There is no question of following anything, there is no question of believing in anything. He just says ‘I have seen – come and see through my eyes. Just come close to me and see through my window. Maybe that will give you an insight and you can open your own window.’

I also say to you: Ihi passika – Come and see. Seeing is a totally different matter. I don’t teach anything; I am not a teacher. In fact I destroy teachings. I don’t help you to learn anything, in fact I help you to unlearn. You have already learned too much.

But the question is relevant. Many people interpret me in that way, they think I am professing licentiousness. I am neither professing licentiousness nor am I professing repression I am simply helping you to see a saner way of life. Licentiousness is insane, as much insane as repressiveness. Christianity created a very repressive atmosphere in the West. That has created licentiousness. For your sinners, your saints are responsible. The world will never be without sinners unless it decides to be without saints. The saint creates the sinner, the saint cannot exist without the sinner. They are partners, they are together.

The Vatican has some deep support for the playboy. If you are repressive, you will create pornography. If you are repressive, people will start finding ways and means to go to the other extreme. Because normality is not allowed. Life has been forced to be either white or black – either be a saint or be a sinner. The priests have not allowed you the possibility that there is something else too. Life really is grey. It is neither black nor white. Black and white are two extremes of grey, but life remains grey.

I am neither teaching licentiousness nor repressiveness. I am simply helping you to become sane.

It is your life; it is nobody else’s life. And you have to be sane about it, otherwise you will miss the great opportunity, the great blessing, the great gift of God. Don’t be repressive, otherwise one day, in this life or in some other life, you will become licentious. And don’t be licentious, otherwise in this life or in some life you will become repressive. The pendulum goes that way. The pendulum has to stop in the middle. And have you watched? If the pendulum stops in the middle, the clock stops. When the mind stops in the middle, time stops. When the mind stops in the middle, the world stops. And in that silence, one knows God.

But listening to me – and you are all carrying a thousand and one repressions – you listen through the screen of your repressions, and you interpret that it is licentiousness. Your unconscious is too full of repressions. I am not teaching anything like that, I am simply saying to be a man is enough. You need not be a saint and then you will not need to be a sinner. Be natural. Don’t interfere with your nature, don’t mold it into pattern. Don’t be ideological and don’t be always hankering to be somebody else. Don’t hanker for betterment, just be natural and relax into your being. And whatsoever is natural is good.

This is the meaning of Tao, this is the meaning of Zen. But you have your repressed unconscious.

And when you hear me, naturally you hear from the repressed unconscious. That repressed unconscious immediately gives colors, changes meanings, interprets.

I have heard:

A Cockney was in great difficulties over which of his two girlfriends he should marry. One was called Margaret and the other Maria. The first was rich but very ugly, and the second was poor but immensely beautiful. So he was divided. The head was saying ‘Marry the rich girl and then you will have no problems. And what is ugliness? You will become accustomed to it. And even beauty is so fragile – today it is there, tomorrow it may not be there. And if you get even the most beautiful woman, after a few days you become accustomed to it and the beauty disappears. It is only a question of a few days. Marry the rich girl.’ But the heart was longing for the beauty. And he was going nuts.

A friend said to him ‘Ere, Bert, why don’t you go to Lourdes?’

‘Lourdes?’ said Bert. ‘Where’s that?’

‘It’s in France’ said his friend. ‘It’s a sort of shrine where people go to get cured. But maybe you could find the answer to your problem there – you know, a sort of miracle from heaven!’ So Bert saved up and went over to Lourdes. A week later he was back, and his friend asked him how he had got on. ‘Great!’ said Bert. ‘I got the answer all right. I went into the big church place – and there, up at the altar, was a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes with a big banner next to it, saying “Ave Maria”.’

So he married Maria, the beautiful girl.

When you hear, it depends on you what color you will give it to it. You are already too full of repressions, you are ready to become licentious – so when you hear me you interpret it as licentiousness. It is nothing of the sort. Be very careful with me.

I have heard:

It was some time since Patrick and Michael had met, so Michael was anxious to hear if there had been any addition to Patrick’s family.

‘Not one’ answered Patrick very sadly. ‘We’ve still got the four.’

‘Still four?’ said Michael. ‘Are you at the birth-control or something?’

‘Not exactly’ replied Patrick. ‘You see, it’s all to do with this new hearing-aid.’

‘What do you mean – this new hearing-aid?’

‘Well, you see, when Bridget and I would get to bed, I’d say to her “Darling, is it sleep or what?” And Bridget would reply “What?” And we would make love. But now, with this new hearing-aid of hers, when I say to her “Well, dear, is it sleep or what?” she just turns on her side and says “Sleep” and off she goes.’

That ‘what’ . . . You already have an idea, and the interpretation follows. Listen to me directly, just put your mind aside.

That’s why so many therapy groups are being run here. Just to help you to put your mind aside. Just to help you to see your unconscious, to help you to cathart your unconscious, to vomit it. So that you can become more and more empty and can listen to me through your emptiness. Otherwise, you are carrying so much rubbish, rubbish of the ages. You have been going through so many ideals, ideologies, you have accumulated so much nonsense. And when you hear me, that nonsense comes in-between.

I am neither for repression nor for licence, they are both aspects of the same coin. The whole coin has to be thrown into the Ganges. You have to become natural, you have to accept all that you are.

In that acceptance is flowering. All is good that God has given to you. How can it be otherwise? – it is a gift from God.

So listen to me, not through your thoughts, your prejudices. Listen to me without your prejudices, just put the mind aside. While listening to me don’t go on interpreting, while listening to me get en rapport with me. Don’t be in a hurry to conclude; that hurry is harmful. You are in such a hurry to conclude, you want to achieve some results so fast, that’s why you go on missing many things. There is no hurry and there is no need to conclude right now. While listening to me, first listen totally.

And then later on you can think about it. If you have listened rightly then your thoughts will not be able to distort the meaning, they will not be able to distract you. Once you have listened rightly, without any interpretation, without any thinking about it, then later on you can bring your whole mind to it. There will be no problem, you will have followed what I have said to you. Otherwise, while listening to me you are continuously thinking by the side. While you are listening to me you are thinking – many thoughts are going, rushing in and out. They are very, very dangerous. Then whatsoever conclusion you arrive at through them will be your conclusion, will not be mine.

But it feels good to throw the responsibility on me. You have become so disrespectful towards yourself that you always throw the responsibility on somebody else. You have forgotten that you are responsible to yourself. Only you. All that happens to you and all that is going to happen to you is going to happen through you. You are wholly and solely responsible for your life. Nobody else is the savior.

And you cannot throw your responsibilities on me. If you want to be licentious be licentious. I am nobody to interfere – who am I? If you want to be repressive, be repressive. But don’t impose meanings on what I say.

-Osho

From This Very Body the Buddha, Discourse #9, Q3

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Buddha’s Inner Orgasm – Osho

We have always heard that tantra is basically concerned with sex energy and sex center techniques, but you say that Tantra is all inclusive. If there is any truth in the former standpoint, the majority of techniques in Vigyana Bhairava seem to be non-tantric. Is this true?

The first thing is to understand sex energy. As you understand it, it is just a part, one part, one fragment of the life force, but as Tantra understands it, it is just synonymous with life. It is not a part, not a fragment – it is life itself. So when Tantra says “sex” energy it means “life” energy.

The same is true about Freudian concepts of sex energy. Freud was also very much misunderstood in the West. It appeared to people that he was reducing life to sex, but he was doing the same thing that Tantra has been doing for so long. Life is sex. The word “sex” is not confined to reproduction, the whole play of life energy is sex. Reproduction is just a part of that play. Wherever two energies are meeting – negative and positive – sex has entered.

It is difficult to understand. For example: you are listening to me. If you ask Freud, or if you ask Tantra masters, they would say that listening is passive, feminine, and speaking is male. Speaking is a penetration of you and you are receptive to it. Between a speaker and a listener, a sex act is happening because the speaker is trying to penetrate you and the listener is receiving. The energy in the listener has become feminine, and if the listener has not become feminine there will be no phenomenon of listening. That is why the listener has to be totally passive. He should not think while listening because thinking will make him active. He should not go on arguing within because argument will make him active. While listening, he should be simply listening, not doing anything else. Only then can the message penetrate and become illumined. But then the listener has become feminine.

Communication happens only when one party has become male and the other party has become female, otherwise there can be no communication. Wherever negative and positive meet, sex has happened. It may be on the physical plane – positive and negative electricity meet and sex has happened. Wherever polarities meet, opposites meet, it is sex. So sex is a very wide, a very spacious term, it is not concerned only with reproduction. Reproduction is only one type of phenomenon which is included in sex. Tantra says that when the ultimate bliss and ecstasy comes inside you, it means your own positive and negative pole have come to a meeting – because every man is both man and woman, and every woman is both man and woman. You are born not only from woman or from man, you are born out of a meeting of the opposites. Your father has contributed, your mother has contributed. You are half your mother and half your father and they both co-exist within you. When they meet within, ecstasy happens.

Buddha sitting under his Bodhi tree is in a deep inner orgasm. The inner forces have met, they have melted into each other. Now there will be no need to seek a woman outside because the meeting has happened with the inner woman. And Buddha is non-attached to, or detached from, woman outside, not because he is against woman, but because the ultimate phenomenon has happened within. Now there is no need. An inner circle has become whole, now it is complete. That is why such grace comes to Buddha’s face. It is the grace of being complete. Now nothing is lacking, a deep fulfillment has happened, now there is no further journey. He has achieved the ultimate destiny. The inner forces have come to a meeting and now there is no conflict. But it is a sexual phenomenon. Meditation is a sexual phenomenon, that is why Tantra is said to be sex-based, sex-oriented – and all these hundred and twelve techniques are sexual.

Really, no meditative technique can be non-sexual. But you have to understand the wideness of the term “sex”. If you don’t understand you will be confused, and misunderstanding will follow.

So whenever Tantra says “sex-energy” it means the “elan-vital”, the life-energy itself. They are synonymous. Whatsoever we call sex is just one dimension of life-energy. There are other dimensions. And really it should be so. You see a seed sprouting, somewhere flowers are coming on a tree, the birds are singing – the whole phenomenon is sexual. It is life manifesting itself in many ways. When the bird is singing it is a sexual call, an invitation. When the flower is attracting butterflies and bees it is an invitation, because the bees and butterflies will carry the seeds of reproduction. Stars are moving in space . . . No one has yet worked on it but it is one of the oldest Tantra concepts that there are male planets and female planets – otherwise there would be no movement. It must be so because the polarity is needed, the opposite is needed to create magnetism, to create attraction. Planets must be male and female. Everything must be divided into these two polarities. And life is a rhythm between these two opposites. Repulsion and attraction, coming nearer and going far . . . these are the rhythms.

Tantra uses the word “sex” wherever the opposites meet. It is a sexual phenomenon. And how to make your inner opposites meet, is the whole purpose of meditation. So all these hundred and twelve methods are sexual. There cannot be anything else, there is no possibility. But try to understand the wideness of the term “sex”.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #76, Q1

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

What is Tantric Sex? – Osho

What is tantric sex? After ‘monkey sex’ and after ‘love-bliss sex’, before the highest cosmic and religious sex in which no partner is needed, in which the cosmos is the partner, isn’t there tantric sex in which two partners are involved, a sex act which is a meditation based on certain techniques?

It is good that after meditating on death you will be meditating on Tantra and Tantra sex. Because sex is also a small death. And because of that small death in sex, there is so much release of joy in you. For a single moment you disappear, and that moment is the climax, the orgasm. In that single moment you don’t know who you are. In that single moment you are pure energy vibrating, pulsating. With no center to it, with no ego in it.

In that single moment of orgasmic space you lose all boundaries, separation. You become vast, huge. You are no more separate from the other. That’s why there is so much joy – although the moment is very small. And once it is gone you feel very frustrated, because it has been so short, it was so fleeting. And you start hankering again. And each time that moment comes you reach to a pinnacle and then you fall into a deep darkness, into the abyss.

So sex brings you joy, and sex brings you great misery too. It takes you to sunlit peaks and then drops you into the darkest valleys. After each sex act one feels frustrated. Something was happening, happening, and it happened…and you could not even catch hold of it and it was gone.

So sex remains the greatest fascination and the greatest frustration.

Because of these two things in the act of sex, there are two types of people. Those who become too much fascinated with the fascination, addicted with sex, they are the people who go on indulging in all kinds of sexualities, and their whole life is nothing but a search for more sex, better sex. And the other, who become addicted with the frustration of sex, they renounce the world, the woman, the man; they escape to the Himalayas or into the monasteries. But both have reacted to sex. Your worldly and your other-worldly, they are not different – they both are sexual, they have chosen one part of the sex act. They have chosen opposite parts, but they have chosen out of the sex act.

That’s why your so-called religions are so much against sex – they have chosen the frustration part. The indulgent and the renunciate are two aspects of the same coin. They are not different people, they are the same people, and both have chosen out of sex.

Tantra is a totally different attitude. It says: There is joy in sex and there is frustration in sex. Because the moment of orgasm is very small. That moment can become very deep, that moment can remain there for hours. That moment, once you know the art of remaining in it, can surround you twenty-four hours. Tantra transforms sex. Tantra is the true religion. It does not choose between the fascination and the frustration, it transcends both. It uses sex as a key. And it is a key – because all life comes through it, all flowers bloom through it and all birds sing through it. All that you see around you, the green and the red and the gold, all comes through sex and is sex energy. All the poetry and all the songs and all the music is rooted in sex-energy. All art, all creativity, is nothing but an expression of sex.

So Tantra sex has to be understood. A few things: The Tantric definition of sexuality is opposite to the modern definition. The modern mind regards sex as a need – like hunger for food – which incidentally provides sense-and ego-gratification. That’s how Freud thinks about sex, that it gives you ego-gratification, satisfaction, relaxation; it relieves tensions, it is a need. Tantra regards sex as a powerful instinctual return to our ultimate reality, one of the highest forms of meditation.

There you have to understand – the first thing to remember – Freud does not understand sex’s ultimate depth. Freud has only looked into the repressed sexuality of man. What Christianity has done in the West, the wrong, Freud was trying to put it right. But Christianity remains superficial and Freud remains superficial. Why? Because the cure cannot go deeper than the disease. The disease was superficial; the cure cannot be deeper than that.

Tantra does not define sex as a need – it is not. A man can live without sex, it is not a need. Not like food – you cannot survive without food. It is not like thirst – you cannot survive without water. But you can survive easily without sex – maybe you can survive longer. Sex is not a need like food or thirst or hunger. Sex has a definitely total dimension, a different dimension altogether. It is a way to contact the ultimate reality. It is an urge to move to the original source.

In ordinary sex it happens only for moments. Even that is rare, because there are very few orgasmic persons left in the world. People have become so much civilized that to be orgasmic seems impossible. A civilized person cannot be orgasmic because he cannot allow himself to be wild.

Only a wild person can be orgasmic, because orgasm is wild. The better you are civilized, the better you are cultured, sophisticated, educated, the less is the possibility for you to be orgasmic. Then sex is just a relief. It is like sneezing, nothing much. It is sheer wastage.

You accumulate energy and you don’t know what to do with your energy. And the energy becomes heavy on you, it has to be thrown out in some way or other. So you go on throwing the energy. But you have lost the language of orgasm. What is the language of orgasm? If you are really orgasmic you will groan and moan and shout and sing and pray, and a thousand and one things will happen when you are making love to your woman or to your man. It is going to be a mad thing.

And that is difficult in a civilized world. Mm? The whole neighborhood will know that now you are making love. And people will start phoning the police-station that there is danger, one person has gone orgasmic.

Yes, you will dance, you will sing, you will utter incoherent sounds, gibberish will come.

One never knows what will happen because you lose control. To be orgasmic means the capacity to lose control. The constant control is there, you are simply sitting on your energies controlling them – ‘This should be, this should not be. This is right, that is wrong.’ You are continuously doing that, inhibiting, repressing. Only go so far, beyond that is danger, only this much is allowed. How can you be orgasmic?

And if you are not orgasmic in other things, you cannot be orgasmic in sex. If in your anger you control, then you cannot be orgasmic in sex. If you can be orgasmic in anger, only then can you be orgasmic in sex. Man is a totality. If you cannot get into a rage, how can you get into love? Impossible.

Have you watched it? Knowingly, unknowingly, couples stumble upon the fact that if they want to make love it is a must that they should fight before they make love. So each evening, couples fight, become angry. Mm? – that becomes a little help. A pillow-fight is helpful. Your energies start moving, your juice starts flowing. And if you can be a little silly and stupid in anger then you can be silly and stupid in love too. Then who cares?

A natural man is orgasmic in all his emotions.

Somebody has asked a question: ‘If people become authentic as you say they should become, authentic and natural, and if they don’t smile because a smile is phony, and if they go on screaming and shouting in the streets, what will happen to the world?’

Many things will happen to the world. First, wars will become impossible. There will be no Vietnams and no Israels, because people will never accumulate so much anger in them that they have to kill, and kill millions. Many things will happen to the world if people are natural. Then they will not shout so much as you think they will shout. Right now they are allowed to shout they will shout – but for how long? If they are given complete freedom, shouts and abusing and condemnation and fights will start disappearing from the world. It is a vicious circle. It is as if you have been starving a person and you don’t allow him to go close to the fridge. And you say ‘If we allow him he will eat too much.’ And you have been starving him – and now you are afraid if you allow him any freedom he will eat too much, he will fall ill. So you don’t allow him to come to the fridge. He has to live by his quota – whatsoever you give, he has to live on.

Now he fantasizes, he dreams: What to do? How to reach to the fridge? How to eat more? His whole imagination becomes focused on food, he dreams of food.

A famous Sufi story says: Three persons were travelling. They purchased a Sufi sweet, halvah. But they had not enough money and the halvah was very costly. It was not enough for three, so there was great debate – who should eat it? They decided ‘We should do one thing: we all should sleep, and in the morning whosoever has dreamt the best dream, he will be the person to eat it all.’ Agreed, they fell asleep.

Early morning, they related their dreams. One said, he was a Christian, he said ‘I dreamt of Jesus. And Jesus said “Come to Heaven, I have prepared the place for you.” And he was calling me, inviting me. It was such a beautiful dream, I have never dreamt such a thing. And Jesus was so radiant, and I feel so good that I have been accepted by Jesus.’

The second was a Hindu. He said ‘This is nothing. I dreamt I have become Krishna. And thousands of gopis are dancing around me, beautiful damsels, and I am playing on the flute. It was such a beautiful dream.’

And the third was a Mohammedan Sufi. And they asked ‘What about you?’ He said ‘Mohammed appeared and said “You fool! What are you doing here? Go and eat the halvah!” So I have eaten it! Because how can you reject when Mohammed commands?

If you are hungry, if you are kept starving, then the fear arises that if you are left loose in the streets you may enter into a restaurant, kill the owner, or do something. But if you are well fed then nobody does anything like that. This is what has happened – for thousands of years you have been repressed, you have been made more and more phony. Now the fear arises. The questioner is right – the fear arises, if people become authentic and start screaming and shouting and doing things the way they always wanted to do and were never allowed to do, the world will go mad

Yes, for a few years the world will go mad. But that madness will be therapeutic, it will help immensely. After that nobody will ever go mad. Neurosis will disappear, psychosis will disappear wars will disappear, politicians will become meaningless. Nations and the militaries and armies will become irrelevant – they will not be needed. That’s why the politician and the priest are so much in favor of repressing people, because they depend on these repressions. Wars will not be there.

Generals won’t like it, army people won’t like it, if there is no Vietnam then their whole purpose is lost. If there are no nations then what is the point of having prime ministers and presidents? They are irrelevant.

Government becomes irrelevant if people are natural. Less and less government will be needed. So, so many people have investments. And their fear looks right, logical, because for so many centuries man has been repressed that they are afraid that things may explode. Yes, for a few years, for one generation at least, there will be great explosion. Then things will disappear.

Bertrand Russell has written that when he was a child, even legs of chairs were covered with cloth. Legs, because they look sexual. And he says ‘I had not seen any legs of a woman.’ The garments had to be so long that you could not see. And Bertrand Russell says in those days people used to fantasize about legs, dream about legs. Even a dream about a leg was enough of an excitement, an ecstasy. Now nobody bothers about the legs. Once you have seen men and women naked you stop worrying about, dreaming about, their nakedness. Dreams change.

The world needs to be more natural. Then there will be less anxiety, less fear, less worry. But for a generation there will be great explosion – after that, things will settle. We have to take that risk, only that risk can save humanity. Otherwise everybody is going mad.

The Tantra attitude about sex is that sex is not a need. It is a cosmic experience, it is an experience of meditation. It is an instinctual return to our ultimate reality, one of the highest forms of meditation.

In fifteen minutes to an hour or more of uninterrupted coitus, Tantra seeks a complete loss of the ego. Just see the difference. Freud says it is a gratification for the ego. And that’s how it has become, and Freud is not wrong. If you see the modern man, he is right.

People go on making love just to prove that they are males or females, or what charming people they are, beautiful people they are. People go on finding new women, new men, just to prove that ‘I am still attractive.’ My observation of people is that they don’t fall in love. Their joy is not love, their joy is conquest. Once they have achieved a woman they are no more interested in her. It is not love.

Now they are seeking new pasture, now they want a new woman. Now they want to prove again that they are still young, looked at, they still have charisma, magnetism. And the more women they can make love with, the more their ego is satisfied. This is not love. And Freud is right that sex gives ego-gratification.

But look at Tantra. Tantra has a totally different idea. Tantra says: The appeal of sex is because it gives you a moment of egolessness, timelessness, meditation. Because of ego-gratification, sex has become very, very superficial, it only scratches the skin. It does not go deep, it has no depth. So many people are worried about premature ejaculation. The reason? They don’t love. If they love, then naturally they can make love for longer periods – the more you are in love, the longer the period will be. For hours you can be in love, because there is no hurry, the ego is not controlling.

In a Tantra coitus you can remain for hours. It is a kind of melting with the woman or with the man, it is a kind of relaxation into each other’s being. And it is meditative, because there is no ego, no thought stirs. And time stops. This is a glimpse of God. Tantra is the natural way to God, the normal way to God. The object is to become so completely instinctual, so mindless, that we merge with ultimate nature – that the woman disappears and becomes a door for the ultimate; the man disappears and becomes a door for the ultimate.

This is the Tantra definition of our sexuality: The return to absolute innocence, absolute oneness.

The greatest sexual thrill of all is no search for thrills, but a silent waiting, utterly relaxed, utterly mindless. One is conscious, conscious only of being conscious. One is consciousness. One is contented, but there is no content to it. And then there is great beauty, great benediction.

The questioner asks: What is tantric sex… A sex which is a meditation based on certain techniques?

If you are too much technique-oriented you will miss the mystery of Tantra. That is pseudo Tantra that is based on techniques. Because if techniques are there, ego will be there, controlling. Then you will be DOING it. And doing is the problem, doing brings the doer. Tantra has to be a non-doing; it cannot be technical. You can learn techniques – you can learn certain breathing so that the coitus can become longer. If you breathe very, very slowly, if you breathe without any hurry, then the coitus will become longer. But you are controlling. It will not be wild and it will not be innocent. And it will not be meditation either. It will be mind – how can it be meditation? The mind will be controlling there. You cannot even breathe fast, you have to keep your breathing slow – if the breathing is slow then ejaculation will take a longer time, because for ejaculation to happen the breathing has to be fast and chaotic. Now, this is technique but not Tantra.

Real Tantra is not technique but love. It is not technique but prayer. Is not head-oriented but a relaxation into the heart. Please remember it. Many books have been written on Tantra, they all talk about technique. But the real Tantra has nothing to do with technique. The real Tantra cannot be written about; the real Tantra has to be imbibed. How to imbibe real Tantra? You will have to transform your whole approach.

Pray with your woman, sing with your woman, play with your woman, dance with your woman, with no idea of sex. Don’t go on thinking ‘When are we going to bed?’ Forget about it. Do something else, and get lost into it. And some day love will arise out of that being lost. Suddenly you will see that you are making love and you are not making it. It is happening, you are possessed by it. Then you have your first Tantra experience – possessed by something bigger than you. You were dancing or you were singing together or you were chanting together or you were praying together or meditating together, and suddenly you find you both have moved into a new space. And when you have started making love you don’t know, you don’t remember either. Then you are being possessed by Tantra energy. And then for the first time you will see a non-technical experience.

When you are making love don’t control. Go into un-control, go into chaos. It will be fearful, frightening, because it will be a kind of death. And the mind will say ‘Control!’ And the mind will say ‘Jump in and keep control, otherwise you will be lost in the abyss of it.’ Don’t listen to the mind, get lost. Abandon yourself utterly. And without any technique you will come to see a timeless experience. There will be no two in it: oneness. A consciousness will be there, a lucid passive consciousness will be there, you will know what is happening, because you will be fully aware. But you will not be there. Awareness will be there.

You have to imbibe the Tantra spirit – it is not a technique to be learned.

-Osho

From This Very Body the Buddha, Discourse #8

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Old Age is the Last Opportunity – Osho

Why is there such an expression as “The dirty old man”? I am getting on and I suspect people are beginning to think about me in exactly those words.

It is because of a long, long repressive society that the dirty old man exists. It is because of your saints, your priests, your puritans, that the old dirty man exists.

If people are allowed to live their sexual life joyously, by the time they are nearing forty-two—remember, I am saying forty-two, not eighty-four—just when they are nearing forty-two, sex will start losing its grip on them. Just as sex arises and becomes very powerful by the time one is fourteen, in exactly the same way by the time one is forty-two it starts disappearing. It is a natural course. And when sex disappears, the old man has a love, has compassion, of a totally different kind. There is no lust in his love, no desire, he wants to get nothing out of it. His love has a purity, an innocence; his love is a joy.

Sex gives you pleasure. And sex gives you pleasure only when you have gone into sex; then pleasure is the end result. If sex has become irrelevant—not repressed, but because you experienced it so deeply that it is no more of any value…. You have known it, and knowledge always brings freedom. You have known it totally, and because you have known it, the mystery is finished, there is nothing more to explore. In that knowing, the whole energy, the sexual energy, is transmuted into love, compassion. One gives out of joy. Then the old man is the most beautiful man in the world, the cleanest man in the world.

There is no expression in any language as the clean old man. I have never heard it. But this expression, the dirty old man, exists in almost all languages. The reason is that the body becomes old, the body becomes tired, the body wants to get rid of all sexuality, but the mind, because of repressed desires, still hankers. When the body is not capable, and the mind continuously haunts you for something which the body is incapable of doing, really the old man is in a mess. His eyes are sexual, lusty; his body dead and dull. And his mind goes on goading him. He starts having a dirty look, a dirty face; he starts having something ugly in him.

It reminds me of the story of the man who overheard his wife and her sister discussing his frequent out-of-town business trips. The sister kept suggesting that the wife should worry about her husband being unchaperoned at those posh resort convention hotels with so many attractive, unattached career women around.

“Me worry?” said the wife. “Why, he’d never cheat on me. He’s too loyal, too decent… too old.”

The body sooner or later becomes old; it is bound to become old. But if you have not lived your desires they will clamor around you, they are bound to create something ugly in you. Either the old man becomes the most beautiful man in the world, because he attains to an innocence the same as the innocence of a child, or even far deeper than the innocence of a child — he becomes a sage. But if desires are still there, running like an undercurrent, then he is caught in a turmoil.

A very old man was arrested while attempting to sexually molest a young woman. Seeing such an old man, eighty-four, in court, the magistrate reduced the charge from rape to assault with a dead weapon.

If you are becoming old, remember that old age is the climax of life. Remember that old age can be the most beautiful experience, because the child has hopes for the future, he lives in the future, he has great desires to do this, to do that. Every child thinks that he is going to be somebody special — Alexander the Great, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong — he lives in desires and in the future. The young man is too much possessed by the instincts, all instincts, exploding in him. Sex is there. Modern research says that every man thinks once at least about sex every three seconds. Women are a little better, they think of sex every six seconds. It is a great difference, almost double; that may be the cause of many rifts between husbands and wives.

Once every three seconds sex somehow flashes in the mind. The young man is possessed by such great natural forces that he cannot be free. Ambition is there, and time is running fast, and he has to do something and he has to be something. All those hopes and desires and fantasies of childhood have to be fulfilled; he is in a great rush, in a hurry.

The old man knows that those childish desires were really childish. The old man knows that all those days of youth and turmoil are gone. The old man is in the same state as when the storm has gone and silence prevails. That silence can be of tremendous beauty, depth, richness. If the old man is really mature, which is very rarely the case, then he will be beautiful. But people only grow in age, they don’t grow up. Hence the problem.

Grow up, become more mature, become more alert and aware. And old age is the last opportunity given to you: before death comes, prepare. And how does one prepare for death? By becoming more meditative.

If some lurking desires are still there, and the body is getting old and the body is not capable of fulfilling those desires, don’t be worried. Meditate over those desires, watch, be aware. Just by being aware and watchful and alert, those desires and the energy contained in them can be transmuted. But before death comes, be free of all desires.

When I say be free of all desires I simply mean be free of all objects of desires. Then there is a pure longing. That pure longing is divine, that pure longing is God. Then there is pure creativity with no object, with no address, with no direction, with no destination — just pure energy, a pool of energy, going nowhere. That’s what buddhahood is. Atisha calls it bodhichitta, buddha consciousness.

-Osho

From The Book of Wisdom, Discourse #26

Also read a related post Don’t Get Stuck in the Outer.

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Don’t Get Stuck in the Outer – Osho

You ask: “Do I rightly understand you that even if you and your beloved can transmute your sexual energy into spirituality, that this relationship will not be satisfying either?”

Yes, it will not be satisfying either. In fact, it will create in you the greatest discontent that you have ever felt, because it will make you aware how much is possible. It will make you aware of the tremendous moment of that orgasmic unity, of that spiritual transmutation. But it will remain only momentary. With the outer, nothing can become permanent. And once the moment is gone, the higher was the peak, the lower will be the valley, and you will fall deep down in darkness. But it will make you aware of one thing, that if male and female energy can have a meeting which is non-temporal, then there will be eternal contentment.

How to manage it? Out of this question the whole science of Tantra was born. How to do it? It can be done. It cannot be done with the beloved outside — it cannot be done without the beloved outside, remember that too, because the first glimpse comes from the beloved outside. It is only a glimpse, but with it comes a new vision that, deep down inside yourself, there are both the energies present — male and female.

Man is bisexual — every man, every woman. Half of you is male and half of you is female. If you are a woman, then the female part is on top and the male part is hidden behind, and vice versa. Once you have become aware of this, then a new work starts: your inner woman and inner man can have a meeting and that meeting can remain absolute. There is no need to come back from the peak. But the first vision comes from the outer.

Hence Tantra uses the outer woman, the outer man, as part of inner work. Once you have become aware that you have a woman inside you or a man inside you, then the work takes on a totally new quality, it starts moving in a new dimension. Now the meeting has to happen inside; you have to allow your inner woman and man to meet.

In India we have had that concept for at least five thousand years. You may not have seen the statues of Shiva as Ardhanarishwar: half man, half woman. That is the picture of everybody’s being, inner being. You must have seen shivalinga: it symbolizes the male. But shivalinga is placed in the female sexual organ, it is not alone; they are together. That again represents the inner duality, the inner polarity, but the polarity can meet and merge.

With the outer, the merger will be only for the moment. Then great frustration and great misery… and the higher the moment, the deeper will be the darkness that follows it. But the meeting can happen inwardly.

First learn that the peak is possible, and then feel grateful to the woman who has given you the peak, feel grateful to the man. Tantra worships the woman as the goddess and the man as the god. Any woman who helps you to attain to this vision is a goddess, any man that helps you to attain to this vision is a god. Love becomes sacred because it gives you the first glimpses of the divine. Then the inner work starts. You have worked without, now you have to work within.

Tantra has two phases, two stages: the outer, the extrovert Tantra, and the inner, the introvert Tantra. The beginning has to be always from the without; it is because we are there, so we have to start from the place we are and then move inwards. When the inner man and woman have met and melted, and when you are no more divided inside, you have become one — integrated, crystallized, one — you have attained. This is enlightenment.

But right now everything is upside down. You have completely forgotten the inner; the outer has become your whole life. This is as if somebody is standing on his head and has forgotten completely how to stand on his feet again. Now, standing on your head your life will be really difficult. If you want to go somewhere, if you want to do something, everything will become very, very difficult, almost impossible.

And that is what is happening. People are upside down, because the without has become more important than the within. The without has become all-important, and the within is completely ignored, forgotten.

The real treasure is within. From the without, you can get only hints of the inner treasure; from the without, only arrows pointing to the innermost core of your being; from without, only milestones. But don’t cling to a milestone, and don’t think that this is the goal and you have arrived.

Remember that the ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation, logic is more important than love, mind is more important than heart. Power over others is more important than power over one’s own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.

Larry went to an Italian restaurant, and just as the waiter was about to serve, he tripped and dumped a whole bowl of minestrone right in Larry’s lap.

Was Larry angry? Was he even slightly ruffled?

He simply looked up with great dignity and disdain and said, “Waiter, I believe there is a soup in my fly.”

Things are completely upside down. The fly is not in the soup, the soup is in the fly. And that’s why there is so much misery. Everybody seems to be simply running after shadows, knowing perfectly well that there is nothing to happen, that nothing is ever going to happen, but what else to do? Standing by the side of the road when everybody is rushing looks silly. It is better to go on rushing with the crowd.

Let this sink deep in your heart: that unless the within becomes more important than the without, you are living a very abnormal life. The normal person is one whose within is the source of everything that he is doing. The without is only a means, the within is the end.

The love affair that you have with a woman or a man is a means to the end. The end is having a love affair with your inner woman or inner man. The outer has to be used as a learning situation; it is a great opportunity.

I am not against the outer love affair, I am all for it, because without it you will never become aware of the inner. But remember don’t get stuck in the outer.

-Osho

From The Book of Wisdom, Discourse #26, Q3

You may also like to read a related post, Old Age is the Last Opportunity.

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

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