I DON'T FEEL LIKE HAVING SEX

Beloved Osho, I never have sex and I don't feel like having sex. I don't think that I am beyond sex, but I love meditation and dancing much more, although it is difficult to accept this. Sex is not happening, and i like that it is not happening. Osho, does it mean that in order to be a sannyasin, I must have sex? I don't like it if it is not a natural happening, if it is only a sex and mind meeting, and not meditation. I enjoy being alone. I see myself in conflict a lot with this, but I can also accept the way I am. Then it all disappears from the mind, and my heart opens again. Osho, is something wrong with me?

Anand Dolano, nothing is wrong with you. Repression of sex is evil, but if sex is not a natural desire in you, to force it will be a repression. There are people who are forcing their natural desire for sex in trying to be celibate; they are going against their nature. And if you don't have any inclination towards sex, forcing it will be going against your nature; it will be the same kind of crime.

A sannyasin needs to be natural. You have to listen to your own body, your own instincts, your own intuition, and follow it. You are not to do anything against your nature. If you like to be alone, and enjoy meditating... that's what everybody else is trying, but first they are trying to get finished with sex so that they can enjoy being alone. You are in a better position, you don't have to pass through the hell. You have already passed through it somehow; perhaps in your past life. You are out of the hell; now don't try to get into the dark tunnel again.

Even the people to whom I say, "Don't repress sex," are not being told to remain always sexual. In fact repression of sex keeps you always sexual. Once you have lived it totally, you are finished with it. And the sooner you are finished the better, because then you can sit silently without being bothered by the need of anybody else as a companion. You are enough unto yourself, and that is the most important thing for a meditator -- the enoughness of aloneness.

But I can understand your problem. Here you must be seeing everybody bringing problems about sex, about their fights. Somebody is completely satisfied; that is his boredom. Somebody is not satisfied, he wants more satisfaction; that is his problem. Somebody is not feeling boredom; that is his problem. Listening to all these problems, naturally anybody will get worried: what is my problem? If you don't have any problem, it certainly means something is wrong with you!

Nothing is wrong with you. Just enjoy being yourself, your meditation, your silence, and let these people pass through their darkness. One day they will all come out of the tunnel; then you can greet them. But just seeing that everybody is in the tunnel, fighting, shouting.... Sitting outside the tunnel in the light, in silence, don't be worried that "Something seems to be wrong with me. Everybody is in the tunnel; what am I doing here? All the meditators are in the tunnel. Nobody is meditating... but they have all come here to meditate; only I am meditating."

"My wife is a typical Jew," complained the man to his companion. "She only makes love doggy-style."
"Doggy-style?" said his companion, "I don't believe it!"

"It is true. I sit up and beg, and she rolls over and plays dead."

Let them play whatever style they want; you simply don't get distracted from your meditation. You are perfectly right. And all these people are trying to reach to your position. You don't have to descend into their troubles, into their problems.

You are blessed. It rarely happens, what is happening to you. It happens only because of your past life; there is no other explanation. In your past life you must have been meditating; you must have been with a master; you must have come to a point where sex became meaningless, where the need of the other dropped, when you became enough unto yourself and your loneliness changed into aloneness; hence in this life you are carrying all that you have achieved in your past life.

It is because of such experiences that all three Eastern religions accepted the idea of reincarnation. The three other religions, which were born outside of India, have no explanation for such an experience. Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism -- all three religions cannot explain your situation. But Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, have a very logical scientific explanation: that you are carrying a quality that you achieved in your past life. Nothing is lost. Once you have achieved it, it goes on with your consciousness into new lives, into new bodies.

OSHO♥

DIRTY OLD MAN

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.

OSHO♥

NOTHING OF TANTRA

Beloved Osho, Do You see shortcoming in the Teachings of Tantra that incline you to feel Tantric methods are not suitable for us?

It is not a complete system. There is a basic fallacy that human beings fall into: they find a small truth, a part of the truth, and rather than discover the whole, the remaining part they imagine to fill up the gap. Because they have part of the truth, they can argue and they can manage to make a system, but the remaining part is simply their invention.

All the systems have done that. Rather than discovering the whole truth, it is the human tendency to say, "Why bother? We have found a small piece which is enough for the showcase, which is enough to silence any enemy who raises any question" -- and the remaining is just invention.

For example, tantra is right that sexual energy is the basic energy, so this energy should be transformed into higher forms. It is a truth. But what happened is that they never went very deep into meditation; meditation remained just secondary. And man's sexuality shows itself so powerfully that in the name of tantra it became simply sexual orgy.

Without meditation that was going to happen. Meditation should have been the most primary thing because that is going to transform the energy, but that became secondary. And many people who were sexually perverted, sexually repressed, joined the tantra school. These were the people who brought all their perversions, all their repressions. They were not interested in any transformation, they were interested only in getting rid of their repressions; their interest was basically sexual.

So although tantra has a piece of truth, it could not be used rightly. Unless that piece of truth is put in second place, and meditation moves into first place, it will always happen that in tantra, people will be doing all kinds of perversions. And with a great name, they will not feel that they are doing anything wrong; they will feel they are doing something religious, something spiritual.

Tantra failed for two reasons. One was an inner reason -- that meditation was not made the central point. And second, tantra had no special methodology for the perverted and the repressed, so that first their repressions and perversions are settled and they become normal. And once they become normal, then they are introduced to meditation. Only after deep meditation should they be allowed in tantra experiments. It was a wrong arrangement, so the whole thing became, in the name of a great system, just an exploitation of sex.

That's what many of the therapists are doing. Just the other day I saw Rajen's advertisement for a tantra group -- with an obscene picture. It will attract people because this is real pornography. Why bother to go to see just pictures printed on paper when you can see real people doing pornography? And Rajen has no understanding of meditation, has never meditated.

And these people will feel good, relieved, because the society does not allow them... In the group they will be allowed to do everything they want to do, so much repression will be thrown out, and they will feel relieved and light and they will feel thankful that they have gone through a great tantra experience. And there has been no tantra experience -- it was simply a sexual orgy. And within a few days, they will again collect repressions because they cannot do it outside in the society. So they become permanent customers, chronic tantrikas.

And the so-called therapists enjoy the money that they bring. They have nothing to lose, they simply allow freedom. They start with all the great words that I have been using -- "freedom," "expression," "no repression," "just be yourself, and don't be worried what others are thinking," "do your own thing." And those idiots start doing their own thing! First people should be introduced to meditation, and then they should be introduced to tantra methods. This is not tantra. Tantra methods are totally different. These people who are doing tantra, they don't know anything about tantra.

For example, Ramakrishna meditated deeply, and whenever he felt any sexual urge disturbing his meditation he would ask his wife Sharda -- who was a beautiful woman -- to sit on a high stool, naked, and he would sit in front of her just looking at her, meditating on her till that sexual urge subsided. Then he would touch the feet of Sharda, his own wife, and he would thank her, saying, "You have been helping me immensely; otherwise, where would I have gone? The urge needed some expression, and just watching you was enough."

The temple of Khajuraho has beautiful statues in all sexual postures. It was a tantra school that made the temple and those statues. And the first thing the student had to do was to meditate on each statue -- and they are arranged in such a way that from one corner you go around the temple in a circle. It may take six months, but you have to watch each statue until you can see it just as a statue with no sexuality in it -- and it is in a sexual posture. But just in your watching it, seeing it for months, it becomes a pure piece of art; all pornography disappears. Then you move to another. And all the perversions of human mind have been put into the statues.

And when you have circled the whole temple, only then will the master allow you inside the temple. Those six months are of immense meditation and of tremendous release, all repressions gone: you are feeling absolutely light. Then the master allows you in. And inside the temple there is no sexual statue; inside the temple there is nothing -- emptiness.

Then the master teaches you how to go deeper into your meditation which has arisen in the six months, and now you can go very deep because there is no hindrance, no problem, no sexuality. And this going deep into meditation with no sexual disturbance means the sexual energy is moving with the meditation, not against it. That's how it is transformed and takes higher forms.

All these so-called therapists know nothing about tantra, know nothing of why it failed. But they are not interested in that, they are interested in exploiting repressed people. And the repressed people are happy because after a seven or ten day tantra session, they feel relieved; they think this is some spiritual growth. But within two or three days all that spiritual growth will be gone, and they are ready for another group. There are some people -- you can call them "groupies" -- that move from one group to another group to another group. Their whole life is just a movement from group to group. Just like hippies... but you can call them "groupies."

OSHO♥