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Sex Matters

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This is the first book I have read from Osho, and I will say that he did a very good job in explaining important things, using few words and pages. It is a little book that will not take you much time to read. What will take longer is thinking about the important points the book makes.

One thing that is important to understand is that this is not a book about sex, at least not in the usual way. So if you are looking for tricks about how to improve your sex life, you are in the wrong place. Instead, this is a work that will give you a different perspective of what sex should be and mean. Is it only for people who believe in the spirit and spiritual evolution.

It will also tell you that the lessons that religion and church sometimes teach -- that sex is sinful, etc. -- is completely mistaken. The book states that it is this teaching we received while young that made this society depraved.

Osho considers that our contemporary society completely forgot about the sacramental and fundamental role mankind once gave to sex. From his point of view, a sexual experience should be a thoughtful act, an experience of love, a means to reach what is beyond our consciousness.

The journey to from sex to to what Osho calls Samadhi (the divine ecstasy) is long, but this should be our final goal. The kind of love that we all know and desire is only the first step. But people who refuse even this first step will never be able to reach the second and from this point of view they will never evolve spiritually.

The main point is that sex is not a end to itself, it is only the beginning, it is only a means through which people who understand the subject correctly can reach the final goal - the "super consciousness."

If you are not interested in topics like spirituality and spiritual evolution, I think you should not buy this book. But if you are open to this, reading Sex Matters will be an extremely interesting and challenging experience that will give you a different take on life. Enjoy!

I was watching Oprah Winfrey the other day and she had this couple on and it was a man and a woman, married with children, but the guy was all dressed and made himself up to look like a woman so it looked like a pair of women. And they were going to stick it out, blah, blah... but in the two minutes I watched it the man who looked like a woman said: "Sex is between the legs and gender is in the head," which obviously was a rationalizing definition. Oprah nodded somberly, repeated the definition, and then she said, "I get it." My point here is that a lot of people say a lot of stupid things about sex and a lot of people go along with it.

The point is made throughout Osho's work that religion and culture is more to blame for violent sex and deviant attitudes about sex than pornographers by repression and shame. This book is about psychology and spirituality and the sexual experience. That is Osho's point; get rid of your conditioning; you have been conditioned by thousands of years of culture which has poisoned your perceptions. He also makes the point that love is rare, that most people don't love and they don't know they don't love.

He states that while most marriages are composed of ugliness, painted faces and everything dead inside, the point of marriage is a deep spiritual communion, a training ground for egolessness (149):"There are many things you can never develop alone. Even your own growth needs someone to respond-someone so intimate that you open yourself to him or her." Osho makes the point that a marriage which is a spiritual communion is vastly different than a marriage with simply a physical or psychological basis, that their offspring will be radically evolved humans, hopefully the future of mankind.

Well, Osho is all about the evolution of human potential and he may have something. He speaks of a future where people live religion and no longer talk about it, where the new man will not be a talker but will live life, a time of no longer "great men" but rather of a general lifting of the quality of humanity. He speaks a future where sex is nobody else's concern and is more like a game, a dance of two energies together, than a serious affair. Osho is remarkable, especially so when you consider that he was born in backwater India and died in 1990, he did an astounding job of identifying how to acheive consciousness and identifying evolutionary trends. His thesis is that the evolution of everything has to be for a reason, for refinement of humankind, a progression towards connection with their souls and producing less volume and higher quality human beings. Osho is anti-formal religion like Eckhart Tolle. This perspective is that religion is inside of us naturally and the external formalized dogmas and culture got it mostly wrong.

The goal is to detach from your ego, to let the ego wither and die from lack of attention. In order to do that, you must witness yourself, stand apart and know yourself and when you acheive the loss of your ego you will experience timelessness and superconsciousness. He says (132): "Sexuality is a simple biological phenomenon. It should not be given so much importance. Its only significance is that the energy can be transformed into higher planes; it can become more and more spiritual. And the way to make it more spiritual is to make it less serious."

The thrust of his argument is that sexual energy is the ONLY energy of life and we can use the sexual experience to open the gateway of our consciousness to our soul by meditation/being aware/witnessing/encountering the whole process during sex instead of just cycling the energy and acheiving nothing. He states that if you don't have sexual energy you don't have the energy to transform; lukewarm people have difficulty reaching enlightenment. Love (heart) will pull the energy upward. Meditation (head) will pull the love energy up. Osho cautions against doing dull things, being dull in conversation, but advocates full energy, passion as a way of life.

He challenges everything: don't fall in love (biological and invasive and blind), rise in love (spiritual and respectful and insightful). On page 206 he talkes about couples who have "risen in love" and their synchronicity, understanding without words, energies relating directly without words. Consciousness as the master, not biology; companions of each other, not masters of one another. He says to go on developing/discovering the love inside you because a loving heart will attract a loving heart.

He sees tantric sex as a way out of unconsciousness, along with meditation during your everyday life. But Osho's point is that the sexual experience is so charged with energy and potential consciousness that it is unique and can bring you to egolessness and timelessness. Ultimately, Osho states that sexual energy will turn away from physical sex and that bio-electrical energy will convert to great love and great compassion.

Osho makes the point that even medicine has gotten into the culture on the subject informing people that they are healthier with more frequent sex. So people are being led by common culture to think frequency is the goal. Osho takes the point that you should only do it when you are flowing at a higher level so that the experience adds to your totality, your consciousness, and not using sex for other goals or letting it become boring. Osho writes (page 265): "Wait for the right moment. There are a few spaces - they come; nobody can manage them. Sometimes they are there. They are just divine gifts. One day suddenly you feel you are flowing. You don't have any weight, feel like you are flying. Some day you feel that you would like to give everything you can to your woman; that is the right moment. Meditate, dance, sing, and let love happen amid dance, singing, meditation, prayer. Then it will have a different quality - the quality of the sacred... When love becomes sacred, it simply makes you so contented, so tremendously at ease and at home." Not for the sake of duty, not because there is nothing to do, not as a path to reconciliation or just to satisfy the person you are living with. Only out of joy. That's one message among many.

The book (and his others) are an argument for tantric sex and other ways to become conscious and superconscious. Tantric sex is not really about sex; it is meditation in everything you do all day and night, including sex. Now, back in the 70s these concepts were tossed around more with young adults than nowadays, but it was also held up to ridicule and misrepresentation by the middle-aged and older people who thought it was just a bunch of crass hippy stuff. While the lowest experience of sex is relief, like a sneeze, tantric sex is meditation during sex, which is a whole different experience. Energy is recycled and creative and takes the experience to a higher plane in which ego and time vanish. It is not just about making an experience memorable; it is about continuing to evolve your consciousness, and create new circuitry. In the 70s we were determined not to be embarrassed about sex, to deconstruct sexual conditioning, and some people were content with that goal. But there was more; there were people who were constructing notions of being careful with your sexuality but in a different way, sex as a luxury not a need, as part of a whole life-awareness to achieve higher consciousness. To be a witness, to increase your aliveness and to aspire to a higher level of consciousness with your sexualilty is very different than simply seeking multiple experiences with multiple partners. The goal of tantric sex is that only by remaining aware does past conditioning not enter the experience and a new circuit is created... circuitry into a higher consciousness that remains with you outside the sexual experience. The mind becomes empty, centered, and old ideas drop away. You and your partner can dissolve into the greater energy and drop the ego from the heart. If you don't work on transcending your ego you will end up old with "very strengthened deep-rooted ego," a 70-80 year old ego. In contrast, childhood is nostalgic because the child feels himself or herself part of the cosmic flow, pre-ego.

A few points as a lot of science has been done that would be taking into consideration:

1. Osho is for people not being shamed by their bodies or overstimulated by nudity, sexual experiementation for males and females alike, which is the direction things are going mainly due to birth control and condoms for protection against pregancy and disease. However, sexual experimentation with multiple partners for women has a biological drawback which is that oxytocin is excreted creating a bonding effect during the sexual experience. Data indicates that this can "wear out" and young women having multiple partners appear to reach a point where they cannot "fall in love" biologically even with their spouse and perhaps affect bonding with their children. Psychologically, the risk is that either sex could bond with the wrong person in casual experiementation.

2. Neurotheology is being questioned. Is it that when the brain stops mysteriously God happens or are we looking at a predictable neuron thing? Brain-mapping indicates that the poserior superior parietal lobe weaves sensory data into the feeling of self ends and the rest of the world begins. If that becomes inactive by deprvivation of sensory input, by inward concentration, the orientation area of the brain cannot find the border between self and the world. The brain has no choice but to perceive the brain to be endless, to be connected with everything - one with creation, exactly what mystics report as a result of prolonged meditation.

It seems to me, however, that there is a lot to say for not entrenching one's ego, that it is beneficial to work at dissolving that border between self and the world in order to stay flexible and sensitive to extrasensory perceptions, including intuition, to stay in the cosmic flow and open to ideas. It appears to me that the rigid egotist gets increasingly hard and narrow, self-centered and certain.

These kind of data came about after Osho's demise and I still think that he has a host of kind of brilliant ideas and insights which may move thought forward, not with absolute agreement, but with gratitude.

Sex is the strongest energy we can produce as humans "out of the box". We can learn techniques over time to recreate that wonderful state of superconsciousness, through magick, through meditation,... but sex will always be at the core. We are born out of it, it is our primary experience of the dualism of I and other.
Understanding the dynamics surrounding it, and the oppression of individual freedom through the association of guilt and shame with sex, which our society has upheld for thousands of years in order to ensure the slow and steady flow of evolution, understanding and overcoming these dynamics appears to be a root responsibility of every individual on the path to superhconsciousness.

ON SEXUALITY and RELIGION
At the other end of the spectrum is "Sex Matters"
(St. Martin's Press, July) by Osho.Definitely more of a "spirituality" than a "religion" book, it links sexuality to transcendence, insisting that sex is important for both physical and mental well-being. Not surprisingly, the author is extremely critical of how traditional religion has connected sex and morality.

"This book tries to deconstruct the different layers of
negative repression and condemnation that Western culture has
put on sex for a long time," said publicity manager John
Karle. "He presents sex as a gift from nature and [tells] how
we need to embrace it and use it as a tool for growth."
--Heidi Schlumpf

From: Religion BookLine from Publishers Weekly

I find any of Osho's works on sex very provoking. He really challenges my sexual views as well as those of our western society. I may not agree with all that he has to say about sex but he sure does make me think about our perceptions of sex. He has a very liberal view of sex. No, in actual fact that is not true! He sees sex as just another part of the human condition. It is our western world that has given it an arena all of its own and it is our own unresolved issues about sex that has created our obsession with it. Well worth reading!
Dr Gunta Krumins-Caldwell author of On Silver Wings

Osho is the same person as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I don't think Bhagwan needs a closer introduction. He was a quite notorious cult leader about thirty years ago - in Oregon, of all places. In contrast to most other cult leaders, Bhagwan managed to salvage *some* of his reputation by exposing the murderous machinations of his closest aides, even inviting the proper authorities to investigate. Later, Bhagwan returned to his native India, where he changed his name to the incomprehensible Osho, probably because the old name was too tainted. "Osho" is also the name inscribed on his tombstone. (He died in 1990.)

Although I can't really relate to his philosophy, it's nevertheless a pity that Osho screwed up and became a cult leader. In some strange kind of way, I like the man - or at least his public image. Osho never called himself a guru or claimed to be divine, and he was often deliberately frivolous or provocative. Please look him up on Youtube, if you don't know what I'm talking about! Osho's message sounds like a curious blend of very low church Hinduism, Western self-help techniques, Nietzsche, libertarianism and hedonism. He wanted people to combine the traits of Zorba with those of the Buddha. Would the world really be a better place if we would all be Neo-Sannyasins? No idea. But perhaps it would be more fun! If only Osho hadn't screwed up in Oregon...

"Sex Matters" is a book containing talks by Osho on the subject of sex. No dates are given, but as far as I understand, the talks in part I were held in India, already before Osho moved to the United States. The talks in section III seems to be more recent, perhaps from the Oregon period? Osho became controversial in deeply conservative and patriarchal India because of his outspoken attitude towards sex, and his constant criticism of mainline Hinduism, especially the ascetic holy men. Indeed, most of his followers have always been Westerners.

However, if you are looking for some kind of steaming exegesis of the Kama Sutra, you will be disappointed. In fact, most of "Sex Matters" deals with Osho's views on the relationship between spirituality, sexuality and celibacy. Interesting, to be sure, but hardly sexy. Osho believes that sex has to be transcended, so humans can reach a state he calls superconsciousness. However, the only way to transcend sex is to go through sex. Thus, sex shouldn't be repudiated or repressed. Indeed, Osho believes that by repressing sex, society has become sick to the bones. Why are humans constantly obsessed and preoccupied with sex? According to Osho, it's because we long for timelessness, egolessness and bliss. In sex, this is temporarily reached in orgasm. However, in meditation, we can experience a more perfect kind of bliss. Therefore, the sexual orgasm must be transformed into meditation and superconsciousness. Osho claims to know a meditation technique by which the orgasm can be prolongued for several hours. After this, the individual will no longer be interested in sex. He will become truly celibate the rest of his life. The ascetic "holy men" of India are hypocrites. They may be technically celibate, but in reality they are constantly preoccupied with sexual thoughts and desires. Only by releasing the sexual energies, can these be transformed into something higher.

To a critical outsider, Osho's advice seems contradictory. On the one hand, he has no problems with divorce, premarital sex, nudity, homosexuality or bisexuality. He wants people to be life affirming instead of life denying, and often comes close to sounding like a hedonist. (This is why his talks became controversial in India.) On the other hand, he wants sex to be spiritualized, turned into "real love", and hence turned off, with people essentially becoming asexual. It's not clear how these two traits can be combined. How do you combine "Zorba" with "Buddha"? Perhaps Osho counts on some kind of catharsis effect? If people indulge in sex, they will eventually loose interest in it. Or so Osho believes. In the third part of the book, it turns out that Osho isn't particularly interested in giving concrete advice about sexual problems. Indeed, he believes that Westerners are too obsessed with having orgasms! Just relax, experiment and go with the flow, is the rather anticlimactic advice. But then, who knows? It may just be working... More murky is Osho's ultimate goal: a society of supermen, apparently an idiosyncratic version of Nietzsche. (Some have accused Osho of incipient fascism.)

"Sex Matters" is a relatively easy read. If the book feels difficult, it's probably because it takes some time to get accustomed to Osho's strange philosophy. As such, Osho's talks aren't superintellectual or overly theoretical. They are often lightened up by funny anecdotes or frivolous jokes. (Including a joke about the Pope and a gay man!) If the book is the best introduction to Osho's worldwiew, I don't know, since I haven't read all his books. Has anyone? Personally, however, I found "Sex Matters" to be an interesting gate into the strange land of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh...

Greatest book ever written...this book defies all the orthodox views of people like us, be it religious, sexual or martial.....this one is a kaleidoscope of the world we never want to or unable to see..or observe..
Sex is the beginning of life and if we ignore or suppress it ...we are suppressing the origin of mankind..

In the style of many spiritual teachers, Osho grabs his reader's attention with his counter-intuitive declarations. For this reason it is absolutely necessary to continue reading through his entire thought development in order not to conclude the exact opposite of his meaning. This is a work worth one's time and effort.

To me, it was enlightening. OSHO is one of the greatest mystic and deals with everything with excellent logic and scientific attitude. No prejudice and old beliefs. It starts from scratch discussing about sex-energy and how to use and transform into a greater reality....love and meditation.
A treat to the reader. Specially, I think every traditional people and old religion like hinudism, jainism, mohammedanism, christianity should read it atleast once.

I am only about a third through the book so far but it is very enlightening, thorough, and you simply know that the words spoke by Osho are truth.