Transforming Sex into Love
by Osho

It is sexual energy that transforms into love. Humans have been set up against their own energy. On the surface, human beings are taught to support the dropping of all conflicts, all fights, all struggles. But deep down they are essentially being taught to fight: "The mind is poison, so fight against it." And on the surface we are asked to drop all conflicts! The very teachings that are the basis of man’s inner conflict ask him to drop conflict! On one hand, drive people mad, and on the other, open asylums to treat them. On one hand spread the germs of sickness, and on the other build hospitals to treat the sick.

It is very important to understand one thing in this context. Human beings can never be separated from sex. Sex is the very source of one’s life; one is born out of it. Existence has accepted the energy of sex as the starting point of creation, and your holy men call it sinful… something that existence itself does not consider a sin! And if you think of God as the creator, and if God considers sex to be a sin, then there is no greater sinner than God in this world, no greater sinner than God in this universe.

You see a flower in bloom– have you ever considered that the blossoming of a flower is an act of passion, a sexual act? What is happening as the flower blossoms? The butterflies will sit on it and carry its pollen, its sperm, to another flower. A peacock dances in full glory– a poet will sing songs to it, your saints will also be filled with joy at the sight of it. But aren’t they aware that the dance is an overt expression of passion, that it is primarily a sexual act? The peacock is dancing to seduce its beloved. The peacock is beckoning to his beloved, his spouse. The bird is singing, the peacock is dancing, the boy has become an adolescent, the girl has grown into a beautiful woman– these are all expressions of sexual energy. These are all different manifestations of sexual energy. All life, all expression, all flowering is basically sex energy. And it is against this sex energy that religions and cultures are pouring poison into the minds of human beings. They are trying to engage human beings in a fight against it. They have entangled people in this battle against their own basic energy, so they have become wretched, pathetic, devoid of love, false, nobodies.

One has not to fight with sex, but to create a friendship with it, and elevate the stream of life to the heights.

While blessing a newlywed couple, an Upanishadic sage said to the bride, May you be the mother of ten children and, ultimately, may your husband become your eleventh child. If passion is transformed, the wife can become the mother; if lust is transformed, sex can become love. It is only sexual energy that flowers into the energy of love.

But we have filled humans with antagonism toward sex, and the result is that not only has love not flowered in them– because love is an evolution beyond sexual energy, and can come only through acceptance of it– but their minds have become more and more sexual because of the opposition to sex. All our songs, all our poetry, all our art and paintings, all our temples and the statues in them have directly or indirectly become centered around sex. Our minds revolve around sex. No animal in the world is sexual like human beings are. Human beings are sexual around the clock– awake or asleep, sitting or walking, sex has become everything to them. Because of the enmity toward sex, because of this opposition and suppression, it has become like an ulcer to their being.

One cannot be free from something that is the very root of one’s life. But in the process of this constant inner conflict, one’s entire life can become sick– and it has. Your so-called religions and cultures are basically responsible for the excessive sexuality that is so evident in humankind. It is not "bad people" but "good people" and saints who are responsible for this. Until the entire human race frees itself from this wrongdoing by religious leaders and "good people," there is no possibility of the birth of love.

I want to say to you that sex is godly. The energy of sex is divine energy, godly energy. That is why this energy creates new life. It is the greatest, most mysterious force of all.

Drop this antagonism toward sex. If you ever want love to shower in your life, renounce this conflict with sex. Accept sex blissfully. Acknowledge its sacredness. Acknowledge its benediction.
Go on searching deeper and deeper into it, and you will be amazed that the more you accept sex with a quality of sacredness, the more sacred it will become. And the more you are in conflict with it, as if it were something sinful and dirty, the more sinful and ugly it will become.

From Sex Matters, Osho, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2002, Copyright © 2002, Osho International Foundation, www.osho.com All rights reserved. To listen to this and many of Osho’s talks, visit: www.osho.com/talks/audio/htm Other books by Osho are published by St. Martin’s Press and CW Daniel. There is a large selection on the Internet, or ask for Osho titles in your local bookstore.