Sex Is Beautiful, Sexuality Is Ugly, and the Difference Has to Be Understood.
“Sex Is a Natural Phenomenon. Sexuality is unnatural, abnormal and pathological. When sex becomes cerebral, when sex enters in your head, it becomes sexuality.
“Now, the head is not the center for sex. It is getting into confusion, it is getting upside down, it is getting deranged. Sex is not the function of the head, but when sex enters in through the head it becomes sexuality. Then you think about sex, then you fantasize about sex. And the more you think, the more you fantasize about it, the more you will get into trouble because then nothing real will ever satisfy you because there is no limitation on fantasy, and reality is limited.
“For example, if you start thinking too much about sex you can create beautiful women – women which are only your fantasy; you will never find them anywhere in the world. Or men, you will never come across them.
“No real woman or man will ever satisfy you because of the fantasy. No real man or woman can fulfill your expectations of fantasy. Fantasy is fantasy; it is a dream.
“You can fantasize a woman who does not perspire, whose body has no body odor. You can fantasize a woman who is always sweet and never bitter. You can fantasize a woman who is always loving and warm and welcoming and never nags you and is never angry, never throws pillows at you. You can fantasize a woman who never ages, who remains always stuck at eighteen years of age – who is always fresh, always young, always beautiful, never falls ill, never makes any demands on you, never betrays you, never looks at any other man with longing, with desire. You can fantasize to no limit, but you will not find this woman anywhere. Now you have created a problem – you are no longer naturally attuned to your sex.
Nature is perfectly capable to be fulfilled, but fantasy cannot be fulfilled.
“You may find your woman in girly magazines, in pornographic books, but you will not find her in reality. And whosoever you will find in reality will fall short.
“That is the problem the West is facing – it has fantasized too much about sex. The West has become sexual through fantasy; the East has become sexual through repression. Both have become sexual and both have lost the natural capacities of enjoying sex. Both have become pathological through different routes. The West has become pathological by fantasizing sex as being the ultimate goal of life, and the East has become pathological by thinking that sex is the ultimate barrier between godliness and man.
Sex is neither: neither is it the ultimate goal nor the ultimate barrier. Sex is a simple phenomenon as hunger or thirst; there is nothing more to it.
“Neither is it what the Eastern mind has been thinking about it. The Eastern mind is too afraid of sex. Out of fear, sex has moved into the head; through the door of fear it entered into the head. So the Eastern so-called saints are simply fantasizing about sex because they have repressed it. And that which you repress goes on coming up again and again. It cannot be destroyed; nothing can ever be destroyed by repression. Repression makes sex pathological sexuality. This is one extreme.
“The West has moved to another extreme. The other extreme is, fantasize about it. Sex is all, everything else is secondary, so have as much sex as you can. But you cannot have too much sex. There are limitations to the body, but you can fantasize as much as you want, there is no limitation to it. So pornography exists, blue films exist, girly magazines exist, and people are being fed on these illusory mirages. Then no woman, no real man will ever satisfy you.
“These are both pathological states. Sexuality is pathological; whether you come to it through greed or fear does not matter. The East has become ill through fear; the West has become ill through greed. Greed and fear are two aspects of the same coin. So on the surface it looks very different, that the East and the West are poles apart. They are not. Those who know, those who can see, can see that it is the same foolishness, the same stupidity. They have arrived to the same stupidity from different doors, that is true, but they have entered into the same place. And both have to be awakened, and both have to be made more enlightened about sex.
“Don’t make much fuss about sex either way, that is the first fundamental. If you want sex to become love, the first fundamental is accept sex as an absolutely natural phenomenon. Don’t bring your metaphysics to it, don’t bring your religion to it. It has nothing to do with religion or metaphysics, it is a simple fact of life. It is a way life produces itself. It is as simple as the trees bringing flowers and fruits – you don’t condemn the flowers. Flowers are sex; it is through the flowers that the tree is sending its seeds, its potentiality, to other trees.
“When a peacock dances you don’t condemn it, but the dance is sex; it is to attract the female. When the cuckoo calls you don’t condemn it; it is sex. The cuckoo is simply declaring, “I am ready.” The cuckoo is simply calling forth the woman. The sound, the beautiful sound, is just a seduction; it is courtship.
If you watch life you will be surprised. The whole of life is through sex. Life reproduces itself through sex. It is a natural phenomenon, don’t drag unnecessary rationalizations into it.
“Sex is Natural, Sexuality is Not. This is the first thing to be understood if you ever want any transformation of sex energy. The first thing is don’t deny it, don’t reject it, don’t repress it. Don’t be too greedy about it, don’t think that this is all – this is not. There is much more to life. And sex is beautiful. Still, there is much more to life, sex is only the foundation, it is not the whole temple.
“Repressed, it becomes sexuality. Fantasized, it becomes sexuality. One is an Eastern way of transforming sex into pathology, the other is a Western way. But nobody, either in the East or in the West, accepts that sex is a simple natural phenomenon. Neither the saints nor the sinners – nobody accepts sex to be a simple natural phenomenon. Both are obsessed with it, hence I say both are not different. Sex accepted, respected, lived, becomes love.”
To continue reading and see all available formats of this talk:
Osho, Unio Mystica, Vol. 1, Talk #4 – A Pearl Of Exceeding Beauty
