At the age of fourteen, somewhere near there, suddenly your energy is flooded with sex. It happens as if the floodgates have been opened in you. Subtle sources of energy, which were not yet open, have become open, and your whole energy becomes sexual, colored with sex. You think sex, you sing sex, you walk sex—everything becomes sexual. Every act is colored. This happens; you have not done anything about it. It is natural.

Transcendence is also natural. If sex is lived totally, with no condemnation, with no idea of getting rid of it, then at the age of forty-two—just as at the age of fourteen sex gets opened and the whole energy becomes sexual, at the age of forty-two or near about—those floodgates close again. And that, too, is as natural as sex becoming alive; it starts disappearing.

Sex is transcended not by any effort on your part. If you make any effort, that will be repressive, because it has nothing to do with you. It is in-built in your body, in your biology. You are born as sexual beings; nothing is wrong with it. That is the only way to be born.

To Be Human Is To Be Sexual

When you were conceived, your mother and your father were not praying, they were not listening to a priest's sermon. They were not in the church, they were making love. Even to think that your mother and father were making love when you were conceived seems to be difficult. They were making love; their sexual energies were meeting and merging into each other. Then you were conceived; in a deep sexual act you were conceived. The first cell was a sex cell, and then out of that cell other cells have arisen. But each cell remains sexual, basically. Your whole body is sexual, made of sex cells. Now they are millions.

You exist as a sexual being. Once you accept it, the conflict that has been created down through the centuries dissolves. Once you accept it deeply, with no ideas in between, when sex is thought of as simply natural, you live it. You don't ask me how to transcend eating, you don't ask me how to transcend breathing—because no religion has taught you to transcend breathing, that's why. Otherwise, you would be asking, "How to transcend breathing?"

You breathe! You are a breathing animal; you are a sexual animal, also. But there is a difference. Fourteen years of your life, in the beginning, are almost nonsexual, or at the most, just rudimentary sexual play that is not really sexual just preparing, rehearsing, that's all. At the age of fourteen, suddenly the energy is ripe.

Watch . . . a child is born—immediately, within three seconds the child has to breathe, otherwise he will die. Then breathing is to continue the whole of his life, because it has come at the first step of life. It cannot be transcended. Maybe before you die then, just three seconds before, it will stop, but not before it. Always remember: Both ends of life, the beginning and end, are exactly similar, symmetrical. The child is born, he starts breathing in three seconds. When the child is old and dying, the moment he stops breathing, within three seconds he will be dead.

When Repression Happens, Obsession Also Happens

Sex enters at a very late stage. For fourteen years the child has lived without sex. And if the society is not too repressed and hence obsessed with sex, a child can live completely oblivious to the fact that sex, or that anything like sex, exists. The child can remain absolutely innocent. That innocence is also not possible, because people are so repressed. When repression happens, then side by side, obsession also happens.

So never carry a single idea against sex in your mind, otherwise you will never be able to transcend it. People who transcend sex are people who accept it very naturally. It is difficult, I know, because you are born in a society that is neurotic about sex. Either this way or that, but it is neurotic all the same. It is very difficult to get out of this neurosis but if you are a little alert, you can get out of it. So the real thing is not how to transcend sex but how to transcend this perverted ideology of the society: this fear of sex, this repression of sex, this obsession with sex.

Sex is beautiful. Sex in itself is a natural, rhythmic phenomenon. It happens when the child is ready to be conceived, and it is good that it happens otherwise life would not exist. Life exists through sex; sex is its medium. If you understand life, if you love life, you will know sex is sacred, holy. Then you live it, then you delight in it, and as naturally as it has come it goes of its own accord. By the age of forty-two, or somewhere near there, sex starts disappearing as naturally as it had come into being. But it doesn't happen that way.

You will be surprised when I say near about forty-two. You know people who are seventy, eighty, and yet they have not gone beyond. You know 'dirty old people'. They are victims of the society. Because they could not be natural, it is a hangover because they repressed when they should have enjoyed and delighted. In those moments of delight they were not totally in it. They were not orgasmic, they were halfhearted.

Living Whole-Heartedly with Gratitude & without "Anti" Attitude

So whenever you are halfhearted in anything, it lingers longer. If you are sitting at your table and eating, and if you eat only halfheartedly and your hunger remains, then you will continue to think about food for the whole day. You can try fasting and you will see: You will continuously think about food. But if you have eaten well—and when I say eaten well, I don't mean only that you have stuffed your stomach. Then it is not necessarily so that you have eaten well; you could have stuffed yourself. But eating well is an art, it is not just stuffing. It is great art to taste the food, to smell the food, to touch the food, to chew the food, to digest the food, and to digest it as divine. It is divine; it is God's gift.

Hindus say, Anam Brahma, food is divine. So with deep respect you eat and while eating you forget everything, because it is prayer. It is existential prayer. You are eating God, and God is going to give you nourishment. It is a gift to be accepted with deep love and gratitude. And you don't stuff the body, because stuffing the body is going against the body. It is the other pole. There are people who are obsessed with fasting and there arc people who are obsessed with stuffing themselves. Both are wrong because in both ways the body loses balance.

A real lover of the body eats only to the point where the body feels perfectly quiet, balanced, tranquil; where the body feels to be neither leaning to the left nor to the right but just in the middle. It is an art to understand the language of the body, to understand the language of your stomach, to understand what is needed, to give only what is needed and to give that coin an artistic way, in an aesthetic way.

Animals eat, man eats. Then what is the difference? Man makes a great aesthetic experience out of eating. What is the point of having a beautiful dining table? What is the point of having candles burning there? What is the point of incense? What is the point of asking friends to come and participate? It is to make it an art, not just stuffing. But these are outward signs of the art: the inward signs are to understand the language of your body, to listen to it, to he sensitive to its needs. And then you eat, and then the whole day you will not remember food at all. Only when the body is hungry again will the remembrance come. Then it is natural.

With sex the same happens. If you have no "anti" attitude about it, you take it as a natural, divine gift, with great gratitude. You enjoy it; with prayer you enjoy it. Tantra says that before you make love to a woman or to a man, first pray—because it is going to be a divine meeting of energies. God will surround you—wherever two lovers are, there is God. Wherever two lovers' energies are meeting and mingling, there is life, alive, at its best; God surrounds you. Churches are empty; love-chambers are full of God.

If you have tasted love the way Tantra says to taste it, if you have known love the way Tao says to know it, then by the time you reach forty-two, sex starts disappearing of its own accord. And you say goodbye to it with deep gratitude because you are fulfilled. It has been delightful, it has been a blessing; you say goodbye to it.

Forty-two Is The Age For Meditation & Compassion

And forty-two is the age for meditation, the right age. Sex disappears; that overflowing energy is no longer there. One becomes more tranquil. Passion has gone, compassion arises. Now there is no more fever; one is not interested in the other. With sex disappearing, the other is no longer the focus. One starts returning toward one's own source—the return journey starts.

Sex is transcended not by your effort. It happens if you have lived it totally. So my suggestion is, drop all "anti" attitudes, antilife attitudes, and accept the facticity: sex is, so who are you to drop it? And who is trying to drop it? It is just the ego. Remember, sex creates the greatest problem for the ego.

So there are two types of people: Very egoistic people are always against sex: humble people are never against sex. But who listens to humble people? In tact, humble people don't go preaching, only egoists.

Why is there a conflict between sex and ego?—because sex is something in your life where you cannot be egoistic, where the other becomes more important than you. Your woman, your man, becomes more important than you. In every other case, you remain the most important. In a love relationship the other becomes very, very important, tremendously important. You become a satellite and the other becomes the nucleus, and the same is happening for the other: You become the nucleus and he becomes a satellite. It is a reciprocal surrender. Both are surrendering to love, and both become humble.

Sex Is Something You Cannot Control

Sex is the only energy that gives you hints that there is something that you cannot control. Money you can control, politics you can control, the market you can control, knowledge you can control, science you can control, morality you can control. Somewhere, sex brings in a totally different world; you cannot control it. And the ego is the great controller. It is happy if it can control; it is unhappy if it cannot control. So there starts a conflict between ego and sex. Remember, it is a losing battle. The ego cannot win it because ego is just superficial. Sex is very deep-rooted. Sex is your life; ego is just your mind, your head. Sex has roots all over you; ego has roots only in your ideas—very superficial, just in the head.

So who will try to transcend sex?—the head will try to transcend sex. If you are too much in the head then you want to transcend sex, because sex brings you down to the guts. It does not allow you to remain hanging in the head. Everything else you can manage from there; sex you cannot manage from there. You cannot make love with your heads. You have to come down, you have to descend from your heights, you have to come closer to earth.

Sex is humiliating to the ego, so egoistic people are always against sex. They go on finding ways and means to transcend it—they can never transcend it. They can, at the most, become perverted. Their whole effort from the very beginning is doomed to failure. You may pretend that you have won over sex, but an undercurrent ... You may rationalize, you may find reasons, you may pretend, you may create a very hard shell around yourself but deep down the real reason, the reality, will stand untouched. And the real cause will explode, you cannot hide it, it is not possible.

So you can try to control sex, but an undercurrent of sexuality will run and it will show itself in many ways. Out of all your rationalizations, it will again and again raise its head.

I will not suggest that you make any effort to transcend it. What I suggest is just the contrary: Forget about transcending it. Move into it as deeply as you can. While the energy is there, move as deeply as you can, love as deeply as you can, and make an art of it. It is not just to be "done"—that is the whole meaning of making an art of lovemaking. There are subtle nuances, which only people who enter with a great aesthetic sense will be able to know. Otherwise, you can make love for your whole life and still remain unsatisfied because you don't know that satisfaction is something very aesthetic. It is like a subtle music arising in your soul.

Fall Into Harmony & Become Relaxed

If through sex you fall into harmony, if through love you become relaxed—if love is not just throwing energy because you don't know what to do with it, if it is not just a relief but a relaxation, if you relax into your woman and your woman relaxes into you—if for a few seconds, for a few moments or a few hours you forget who you are, and you are completely lost in oblivion, you will come out of it purer, more innocent, more virgin. And you will have a different type of being—at ease, centered, rooted.

If this happens, one day suddenly you will see that the flood has gone and it has left you very, very rich. You will not be sorry that it has gone. You will be thankful, because now richer worlds open. When sex leaves you, the doors of meditation open. When sex leaves you, then you are not trying to lose yourself in the other. You become capable of losing yourself in yourself. Now another world of orgasm, the inner orgasm of being with oneself, arises. But that arises only through being with the other.

One grows, matures through the other; then a moment comes when you can be alone, tremendously happy. There is no need for any other, the need has disappeared but you have learned much through it—you have learned much about yourself. The other became the mirror. And you have not broken the mirror—you have learned so much about yourself, now there is no need to look into the mirror. You can close your eyes and you can see your face there. But you would not be able to see that face if there had been no mirror from the very beginning.

Let your woman be your mirror, let your man be your mirror. Look into her eyes and see your face, move into her to know yourself. Then one day the mirror will not be needed. But you will not be against the mirror—you will be so grateful to it, how can you be against it? You will be so thankful, how can you be against it? Then, transcendence.

Transcendence Is Not Repression

Transcendence is a natural outgrowing—you grow above, you go beyond, just as a seed breaks and a sprout starts rising above the ground. When sex disappears, the seed disappears. In sex, you were able to give birth to somebody else, a child. When sex disappears, the whole energy starts giving birth to you. This is what Hindus have called dwija, the twice-born. One birth has been given to you by your parents, the other birth is waiting. It has to be given to you by yourself. You have to father and mother yourself.

Then your whole energy is turning in—it becomes an inner circle. Right now it will be difficult for you to make an inner circle. It will be easier to connect it with another pole a woman or a man—and then the circle becomes complete. Then you can enjoy the blessings of the circle. But by and by you will be able to make the inner circle alone, because inside of you also, you are man and woman, woman and man.

Nobody is just a man, and nobody is just a woman—because you come from a man and a woman's communion. Both have participated; your mother has given something to you, your father has given something to you. Fifty-fifty, they have contributed to you; both are there. There is a possibility that both can meet inside you; again your father and mother can love inside you. Then your reality will be born. Once they met when your body was born; now, if they can meet inside you, your soul will be born. That's what transcendence of sex is. It is a higher sex.

When you transcend sex, you reach to a higher sex. Ordinary sex is gross, higher sex is not gross at all. Ordinary sex is outward-moving, higher sex is inward-moving. In ordinary sex, two bodies meet, and the meeting happens on the outside. In higher sex, your own inner energies meet. It is not physical, it is spiritual—it is transcendence.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
St. Martin's Press. ©2001. www.stmartinspress.com

This article was excerpted from:

Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships
by Osho.

In our post-ideological world, where old moralities are out of date, we have a golden opportunity to redefine and revitalize the very foundations of our lives. We have the chance to start afresh with ourselves, our relationships to others, and to find fulfillment and success for the individual and for society as a whole.

Info/Order this book (2002 paperback edition - different cover).

About the Author

Known for his revolutionary contribution to the science of inner transformation, Osho continues to inspire millions of people worldwide in their search to define a new approach to individual spirituality that is self-directed and responsive to the everyday challenges of contemporary life. Osho's teachings defy categorization, covering everything from the individual quest for meaning to the most urgent social and political issues facing individuals and society today. The Sunday Times of London named him one of the '1,000 Makers of the Twentieth Century,' and novelist Tom Robbins called him 'the most dangerous man since Jesus Christ.' For more information visit http://www.osho.org