According to tantra, sex energy is life itself, says OSHO
We have heard that tantra is basically concerned with sex energy and sex centre techniques, but you say that tantra is all-inclusive. If there is any truth in the former view, the majority of techniques in Vigyan Bhairav seem to be non-tantric. Is this true?
Osho: The first thing is to understand sex energy.As you understand it, it is just a fragment of the life force,but as tantra understands it, it is not a part, not a fragment — it is life itself. So when tantra says ‘sex’ energy it means ‘life’ energy. The same is true about Freudian concepts of sex energy. Freud was also misunderstood in the west. It appeared to people that he was reducing life to sex, but he was doing the same thing that tantra has been doing for so long. Life is sex.The word ‘sex’ is not confined to reproduction, the whole play of life energy is sex. Reproduction is just a part of that play.Wherever two energies are meeting — negative and positive — sex has entered. It is difficult to understand.
For example: you are listening to me. If you ask Freud, or if you ask tantra masters, they would say that listening is passive, feminine, and speaking is male. Speaking is a penetration of you and you are receptive to it. Between a speaker and a listener a sex act is happening because the speaker is trying to penetrate you and the listener is receiving.The energy in the listener has become feminine, and if the listener has not become feminine, there will be no phenomenon of listening.That is why the listener has to be totally passive. He should not think while listening because thinking will make him active. He should not go on arguing within between arguments as that will make him active.While listening, he should be simply listening.... Only then can the message penetrate and become illumined; but then the listener has become feminine.
Communication happens only when one party has become male and the other party has become female, otherwise there can be no communication. Wherever negative and positive meet, sex has happened. It may be on the physical plane — positive and negative electricity meet and sex has happened.Wherever polarities meet, opposites meet, it is sex. So sex is a very wide term, it is not concerned only with reproduction. Tantra says that when the ultimate bliss and ecstasy comes inside you, it means your own positive and negative pole have come to a meeting. The Buddha sitting under his Bodhi tree is in a deep inner orgasm. The inner forces have met, they have melted into each other. Really, no meditative technique can be nonsexual. But you have to understand the wideness of the term ‘sex’. So whenever tantra says ‘sex-energy’, it means the ‘elan-vital’, the life-energy itself. They are synonymous. Whatsoever we call sex is just one dimension of life-energy. There are other dimensions. And really it should be so.You see a seed sprouting, somewhere flowers are coming on a tree, the birds are singing — the whole phenomenon is sexual. It is life manifesting itself in many ways. When the bird is singing, it is a sexual call. When the flower is attracting butterflies and bees, it is an invitation, because the bees and butterflies will carry the seeds of reproduction…. Everything must be divided into two polarities.And life is a rhythm between opposites.Repulsion and attraction, coming nearer and going far, these are the rhythms.