In all the past ages, East or West, sex was never a boring thing, never, because all religions have taken care of it. They have been preaching anti-sexuality and through anti-sexuality they were keeping sex alive.
The post-Freudian man is bound to feel one day or other that sex is a boring thing. It is. It is a very mechanical thing. All that you see in it comes out of your repression. It is not there.
It is almost like a man who has been fasting — food becomes a great fantasy when you fast. If you are fasting and you go to the market, you will not see anything else except food stores, restaurants, hotels. You will not see other things. There are other things also, millions of things are being sold, but you will only see food everywhere, food will float everywhere….
From the age ten, and even before that, you start. How long can you remain unbored? And all kinds of things have become available in America – Vatsyayana’s Kamasutras and pictures and picture books of Khajuraho, Konarak and Puri, and a thousand and one methods of creating beautiful bodies – at least an illusion of beautiful bodies through photography, photographic tricks. Pornography has become so important that it is killing your sexual desire. Hefner is the enemy of sexual desire, and Playboy and all the other girlie magazines are killing and destroying it.
And then there are heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual and a thousand and one kinds of methods of making love. While reading Vatsyayana’s Kamasutras – it is one of the great works – I have always felt that in the days of Vatsyayana, India must have been in the same state of mind as America is in today. People must have got bored, otherwise who invents so many sex postures? Why? One posture has been always enough. And Vatsyayana goes on inventing. It seems that people must have become very bored – then you have to invent something. This inventiveness simply shows boredom. Vatsyayana must have been helping people – he was a great seer, a great wise man. He must have looked at people’s misery. They were getting so bored that something had to be done.
Whenever a culture becomes too free about sex it becomes bored. India was once very, very free – one of the most free countries in the world. When there is freedom, naturally you don’t repress. When you don’t repress, boredom arises.
So many postures were invented – many ways of trying to get the same pleasure through new channels. If you are bored, try it in some other way. Group sex must have been prevalent- there are indications in the Khajuraho temples. When people are getting bored with a one-man-one-woman relationship, they start playing with groups. Wife swapping has become prevalent. These are all signs that sex is dying, dying because of too much freedom….
My whole effort here is to make you bored with sex. Because if you are bored with sex only then can you become interested in God, never otherwise. A repressed person remains interested in sex, that’s why I am against repression. You will be surprised, but this is my logic, this is my mathematics. A repressed person remains interested in sex, remains obsessed with sex, so I say have all sex that you can have and soon you will be finished with it. And when you are finished with it and sex loses all meaning, that will be a great day, a great moment in your life. Then you can become interested in God, never before it.
Only a bored man — bored with sex — can really become a celibate. A brahmacharya arises, a pure brahmacharya arises out of sheer boredom. If you are not yet bored, then your brahmacharya will be a repression and I am not in favour of any repression because repression keeps the joy in sex alive.
People think that I teach sex. I am one of the persons who is teaching God. If I talk about sex there is a reason for it – the reason is that I would like you to know it before it is too late. Know it, know it totally, go into it headlong and be finished with it. Go into it meditatively, alert, aware – that is the approach of tantra, that’s the tantra attitude. Go into it and see it. If you know something well you are free of it. Knowledge, understanding, liberates.
To me you are in a good state of mind, don’t be worried. It is good, you are fortunate. Sex is finished. Now don’t go to any mahatma otherwise it may start again. This is the moment when you can help your energy to move towards God without any hindrance. Now there is no obstruction at all.
It is sex energy that becomes SAMADHI. When sex energy is freed from sexual objects it starts moving into meditation, it becomes prayer.
Yes, Jesus is right when he says God is love. It is your love energy that flowers as God. Once it is freed from man and woman, once you are no longer interested in man and woman, then where will your energy go? It will start moving inwards. The man is outside, the woman is outside. If you remain interested in man and woman you remain interested in the other. When there is no sex left, when you are finished with the other, your eyes start closing. You become silent naturally.
Source:
This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Gautam Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune, India.
Discourse series:
Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 1
Chapter #2
Chapter title: Ignorance is Ultimate
12 June 1977 am in Buddha Hall
References:
Osho has spoken on the phenomena of ‘sex, sexuality, longing, desire, repression, religion, priests, boredom, tantra, meditation, samadhi’ in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
