Question : Is n’t Tantra a way of Indulgence?
Osho : IT IS NOT. It is the ONLY way to get out of indulgence. It is the only way to get out of sexuality. No other way has ever been helpful for man; all other ways have made man more and more sexual. Sex has not disappeared.
The religions have made it only more poisoned. It is still there – in a poisoned form. Yes, guilt has arisen in man, but sex has not disappeared. It CANNOT disappear because it is a biological-reality. It is existential; it cannot simply disappear by repressing it.
It can disappear only when you become so alien that you can release the energy encapsulated in sexuality – not by repression is the energy released, but by understanding. And once the energy is released, out of the mud the lotus….
The lotus has to come UP out of the mud, it has to go higher, and repression takes it deeper into the mud. It goes on repressing it. What you have done up to now, the whole humanity, is repressing sex in the mud of the unconscious.
Go on repressing it, sit on top of it; don’t allow it to move; kill it by fasting, by discipline, by going to a cave in the Himalayas, by moving to a monastery where a woman is not allowed.
There are monasteries where a woman has never entered for hundreds of years; there are monasteries where only nuns have lived and a man has never entered. These are ways of repressing. AND they create more and more sexuality and more and more dreams of indulgence.
No, Tantra is not a way of indulgence. It is the only way of freedom. Tantra says: Whatsoever is has to be understood and through understanding changes occur of their own accord. So listening to me or listening to Saraha, don’t start thinking that Saraha is supporting your indulgence. You will be in bad shape if you accept that.