Understanding Sex and Going Beyond it
Today we are afraid to discuss sex. Why are we so mortally afraid of this subject? It is because of a presupposition that man may become sexual just by talking about sex. This view is totally wrong. There is, after all, a vast difference between sex and sexuality. Our society will only be free of the ghost of sex when we develop the courage to talk about sex in a rational and healthy manner.
It is only by understanding sex in all its aspects that we will be able to transcend sex. You cannot free yourself from a problem by shutting your eyes to it. Only a madman thinks his enemy will vanish if he closes his eyes. The ostrich in the desert thinks in this way. The ostrich thrusts his head into the sand and, since he cannot see his enemy, he thinks his enemy is not there. This kind of logic is pardonable in the case of the ostrich, but in man it is unforgivable.

As far as sex is concerned, man behaves no better than the ostrich. He thinks that by shutting his eyes, by ignoring it, sex will vanish. If such miracles could occur, life would be very easy indeed. But alas, nothing disappears just by pulling down the blinds. On the contrary, this is proof that we are scared of sex, that its attraction is more powerful than our resistance. Because we feel we cannot conquer sex, we shut our eyes to it.

Shutting one's eyes is a sign of weakness, and the whole of humanity is guilty of it. Not only has man blatantly shut his eyes to sex, he has also entered into innumerable inner conflicts with it. The devastating results of this war with sex are too well known to be enumerated here. Ninety-eight per cent of mental illness, of neurosis, is because of the suppression of sex. Ninety-nine per cent of the women suffering from hysteria and related illnesses suffer from sexual disorders. The major cause of fear, of doubt, of anxiety, of the stress and strain on contemporary man, is the pressure of passion. Man has turned his back on an inherent and powerful urge. Without attempting to understand sex, we have shut our eyes to it out of fear. And the results have been catastrophic indeed.

To see the truth of this, man need only scan his literature, the mirror of his mind. If a man from the moon or from Mars were to come here and go through our literature, were to read our books and our poetry, were to see our paintings, he would be surprised. He would wonder why all our art and literature is centered around sex.

"Why are all man's poems, novels, magazines and stories saturated with sex? Why is there a half-naked woman on every magazine cover? Why is every movie concerned with lust?" he would ask.

He would be perplexed. The alien visitor would wonder why man thought about nothing but sex. He would be even more confused if he met a man and talked to him, because the man would try, would try very hard, to impress upon him that he was totally innocent of the existence of sex. The man would talk of the soul, of God, about heaven, about emancipation, but he would not say a word about sex, although his whole being would be filled with ideas about sex. The alien would be stunned to learn that man has even invented a thousand and one devices to gratify a desire about which not a breath is uttered.

Man's death-oriented religion has made man sex-minded. And it has perverted him from another angle as well. It shows him the golden pinnacle of celibacy, of brahmacharya, but gives him no guidance in getting a foothold on the first rung, in understanding the base, in understanding sex.

First of all, we have to recognize sex and understand it; we have to comprehend this elemental urge. Only then can we strive to transcend it, to sublimate it, so we can reach the stage of celibacy. Without understanding this basic life-force in all its forms and facets, all man's efforts to restrain and suppress it will only help him degenerate into a sick and incoherent lunatic. But we do not concentrate on the basic illness, we spout the high ideal of celibacy. Man has never been so sick, so neurotic, so wretched or so unhappy. Man is completely perverted. He is poisoned at the root.

I will illustrate with an example:
A plane meets with an accident. You are nearby and you rush to the scene. What is the first question that will come to your mind when you see a body in the debris?
"Is this person Hindu or Muslim?"
No.
"Is this person Indian or Chinese?"
No.
In a split second, and first and foremost, you will look to see whether the body is a man's or a woman's.

Are you aware why this question springs to mind first of all? It is because of repressed sex. It is the repression of sex that makes you so conscious of the difference between a man and a woman. You are able to forget the name, face or nationality of someone -- if I had met you, I might forget your name, your face, your caste, your age, your status, everything about you -- but you never forget the sex of a person, you never forget whether someone was male or female. Have you ever had any doubt that the person you had a conversation with, let's say, on the train to Delhi last year, was a man?

Why? When you forget everything else about a person, why can't you erase that aspect from your memory? It is because the awareness of sex is so firmly rooted in man's mind, in his thought processes. Sex is ever-present, ever-active.

Neither our society nor our planet can ever be healthy so long as this iron curtain, this distance, exists between men and women. Man cannot be at peace with himself so long as this burning fire rages inside him, so long as he sits tightly on it. He has to strive to suppress it every moment of every day. The fire is burning us. It is scorching us. But even so, we are not prepared to face it, not prepared to look into it.

What is this fire?

It is not an enemy, it is a friend.

What is the nature of this fire?

I want to tell you that once you know this fire it will no longer be an enemy, it will become a friend. If you understand this fire, it will not burn you. It will warm your homes, it will cook for you, and it will also become your lifelong friend.

Electricity has flashed in the sky for millions of years. Sometimes it killed people, but nobody ever thought that this very same energy would someday run our fans and light our homes. Nobody could imagine these possibilities then. But today this electricity has become our friend. How? Had we shut our eyes to it, we would never have fathomed its secrets, we would never have utilized it; it would have remained our enemy, it would always have been an object of fear. But man assumed a friendly attitude towards electricity. He took it upon himself to understand it, to know it, and slowly, slowly, a lasting friendship developed. Had that not happened, we would hardly be able to manage today.

The sex inside man, his libido, is even more vital than electricity. A minute atom of matter annihilated an entire hundred thousand people in the city of Hiroshima, but an atom of man's energy can create a new life, a new person! Sex is more powerful than an atom bomb. Have you ever thought about the infinite possibilities of this force, about how we can transform it to better mankind? An embryo can become a Gandhi, a Mahavir, a Buddha, a Christ. An Einstein can evolve from it; a Newton can be manifest in it. An infinitely small atom of sex energy has a towering person like Gandhi manifest in it!

But we are not inclined to even try to understand sex. We have to summon immense courage even to talk about it in public. What kind of fear is it that plagues us, so that we are not prepared to understand the force out of which the whole world is born? What is this fear? Why does sex alarm us so?

People were shocked when I spoke about sex at the first meeting last month, in Bombay. I received many angry letters asking me not to talk in this fashion, letters saying I should not speak on this subject at all. I wonder why one should not discuss this subject? When this urge is already inherent in us, why should we not talk about it? Unless we can understand its behavior, can analyze it, how can we hope to raise it to a higher plane? By understanding it we can transform it, we can conquer it, we can sublimate it. Unless that happens, we will die and still we will be unable to free ourselves from the grip of sex.

My point is that those who forbid talk about sex are the same people who have pushed humanity into an abyss of sex. Those who are frightened of sex, and have therefore convinced themselves they are innocent of sex, are lunatics. They have conspired to make the whole world a gigantic asylum.

Religion is concerned with the transformation of man's energy. Religion aims to integrate the inner being of man -- both his chaste aspirations and his basic urges. It is also true that religion should guide man from the lower to the higher, from darkness to light; to the real from the unreal, to the eternal from the ephemeral.

But to reach somewhere, one has to know the starting point. We have to start from where we are; it is imperative we know this place first. And this is more important at the moment than the place we want to reach. In this context, sex is the fact, the reality; sex is the starting point. But God? God is far from here. We can reach the truth of God only by understanding the starting point of the journey; otherwise we cannot move an inch. We will be lost. We will be on a merry-go-round, going nowhere.
OSHO
From Sex to Superconsciousness, Chapter-

http://www.oshoworld.com/onlinemag/april10/htm/