Osho – Why are all the religions against Sex

Question – Why are all the religions against Sex? And why are you not against Sex?

Osho – All the religions are against sex because that is the only way to make you miserable. That is the only way to make you feel guilty. That is the only way to reduce you to being sinners.

Sex is one of the most fundamental truths of life, so fundamental that if somebody says it is wrong, he is putting you in trouble. You cannot get rid of it. Unless you become really enlightened you cannot get rid of it. And to become enlightened there is no need to get rid of it. In fact, if you go deeper into it, enlightenment will be easier because a man who has gone deep in love will be capable of going deep in meditation — because in the deepest moments of love there are a few glimpses of meditation.

That’s how meditation has been discovered. That’s how SAMADHI, satori have been discovered. Because in a deep love affair, sometimes, suddenly, your mind disappears. There are no thoughts, no time, no space. You become one with the whole. People have carried those glimpses in their memories and they want to attain to those glimpses more naturally, more in their aloneness, because to depend on the other is not very good, and then it happens only for a moment. How to attain to that glimpse permanently, so it remains there, it becomes your nature?

Religions are against sex because down the centuries they have come to know that sex is the most enjoyable thing for man. So poison his joy. Once you poison his joy and you put this idea in his mind that something is wrong in sex — it is sin — then he will never be able to enjoy it, and if he cannot enjoy it, then his energies will start moving in other directions. He will become more ambitious.

A really sexual person will not be ambitious. Why? He will not hanker to become the prime minister or the president. Why? The energy that becomes ambition is repressed sex. A sexually free person will not try to become anybody. Whatsoever he is, he is beautifully happy. Why should he bother to hoard money…? When you cannot love, you hoard money; money is a substitute. You will never find a money hoarder a loving person, and you will never find a loving person a money hoarder. It is very difficult. Money is a substitute; it is a pseudo love affair. You are afraid to make love to a woman or a man, so you make love to dollars, rupees, pounds.

Have you not seen when a miser comes across money? Have you seen the light that comes to his eyes, and how the face becomes luminous, as if he is looking at a beautiful woman or a beautiful man…? Just give him a hundred-dollar note, a greenback, and see how he touches it, how he feels it. Saliva starts flowing. It is a love affair. Just look when he opens his money box and looks into it. He is facing God. Money is his God, his beloved.

And when an ambitious person is trying to become the prime minister or the president…. Ambition is sex energy diverted, and the society diverts you. You say, “Why are all the religions against sex?” They are against sex because that is the only way to make you unhappy, guilty, afraid. Once you are afraid, you can be manipulated. Remember this fundamental rule: make a person afraid if you want to dominate him. First make him afraid. If he is afraid, you can dominate him. If he is not afraid, why and how can you dominate him? How will he allow you to be the dominator? He will say, “Be gone. Who are you to dominate me?” First make him afraid.

And there are two things which make people very much afraid. One is death, so religions have exploited that. That you are going to die, that you are going to die, that you are going to die — they persist, so they, they create a trembling. So you say, “What, what am I to do now? How should I behave? How should I live?” And then they say there is hell and there is heaven. Greed and profit, punishment and reward.

So one is death. But death is not yet, so you can postpone it. It is not much of a problem; you say, “Okay, when we will die we will see. And I am not going to die right now. I am going to live fifty years more, at least, so why bother?” And man does not have a very distant — seeing vision; he does not have radar. He cannot see fifty years ahead. Yes, if you say to him, “Tomorrow you are going to die,” he may become afraid, but fifty years? He will say, “Wait, there is no hurry. Let me do my things first.” He may even start doing them faster because “Only fifty years are left? So let me do whatsoever I want to do. Eat, drink, be merry.”

So the second thing, which is more fear-creating, is sex. Sex is already the problem. Death WILL be the problem; it is in the future. Sex has the problem in the present; it is already there. Religions contaminate your sex energy. They start making you afraid that it is wrong, it is ugly, it is sin, it will drag you to hell. They want to dominate you; that’s why they are against sex.

I have no idea to dominate you I am here to make you absolutely free. And there are only two things needed to make you free. One is that sex is not a sin. k is a God-given gift, it is a grace. And second, there is no death. You will be forever, because whatsoever is remains. Nothing ever disappears. Forms change, names change, but the reality continues.

So I take away all fear. I don’t want to make you in any way feel guilty, afraid. I want to take all fears from you so that you can live naturally, without any domination, so that you can live according to your own spontaneity. And that spontaneity will bring enlightenment. Then sex disappears, and then death disappears.

It has disappeared to me, so I know it will disappear to you also. So why be worried…? And it disappears more easily if you have known it rightly. knowledge of anything takes you beyond; you are finished with it. If you have not lived rightly, you will be as other religious people who have not lived rightly: they hanker, they desire, they dream, but they repress, so they remain clinging to their repressions — they are never free of sex.

A beautiful story. Meditate over it:

The time is the not too distant future. We have finally destroyed ourselves by means of a nuclear holocaust. Everyone is waiting restlessly in a seemingly endless line leading up to the gates of heaven. At the head of the line, Peter is deciding which souls shall enter and which shall be turned away.

Some distance from the gates, an American stands in line wringing his hands in apprehension. Suddenly he hears a murmur beginning at the front of the line, and growing into a joyful rush of sound as it builds in volume moving down the line toward his place. He can make out sounds of celebration in many languages. He hears shouts of “Bravo,” “Bravissimo,” “Bis,” “Encore,” and “Hip, Hip, Hooray.”

“What is it? What is it all about?” he implores of those up ahead of him in the line. At last someone closer to the gates shouts back to him, “Peter just told us:’Screwing don’t count!’…”

Get it? Sex has nothing to do with your enlightenment. Love has nothing to do with your enlightenment. It is in fact going to help you because it will make you more natural. Be natural and don’t cultivate any abnormalities, and you will be closer to God.

Hence I am not against sex, I am not against anything. I am only against unnatural attitudes, perverted attitudes. Be natural and normal, and allow God to flow though you. He will take you. His river is already moving towards the sea. Don’t try to swim upstream, don’t try to push the river. Go with the river. That’s what surrender is, and that’s what sannyas is.