Beloved Osho,

I have been a sannyasin for one year, and feel like a kangaroo who has to make big jumps to follow you. Today, I was shocked to read that you had said you may not remain celibate when you are healthy again. I thought you had said that an enlightened person has transcended sex. Yet, i know how beautiful it is to make love. Why do I feel so confused?

Please comment.

One always feels confused if one has expectations. Now who told you that enlightened people transcend sex? And immediately you are saying, “… although love is such a beautiful experience.” So why prevent enlightened people from having such a beautiful experience? But the idea has been created down the centuries that the truly religious people are celibate, and particularly that the enlightened person is celibate.

I have never been celibate. Amongst so many beautiful women, you want me to be celibate? It is like standing by a beautiful spring, purest water flowing from the top of the hill, and you are standing thirsty by the side of it because you are enlightened. Forget all about it! I will take care of enlightenment later on – right now I am going to drink from this beautiful spring.

And you have also misunderstood. I have said enlightened people transcend sex, but I have never said they transcend love. It is a complicated phenomenon.

You think sex is love? It is simply biological bondage. In fact, only an enlightened person can make love. What you call making love is just biological gymnastics. You don’t know what making love means. So I say to you that the enlightened man and the enlightened woman are the most beautiful lovers. It need not necessarily be sexual, it need not necessarily be non-sexual. An enlightened man is free.

My mother came to me yesterday; she was a little worried. She said, “It is beautiful to see you dancing, but now you have started dancing with girls!” She was concerned that if people in India see this, in the pictures, on the video, they will be very much shocked. I said, “So far, so good.”

But I am free – more free than Gautam Buddha, more free than Mahavira. Gautam Buddha did not have the guts to dance with a girl.

I can dance because I don’t see any problem. There is no hindrance, no boundary to me; I can do anything.

Just the other night, Vivek was asking me, “Should we go to the disco?”

I said, “I am going to the disco one day, but right now it is too late.”

My discos, my restaurants are called Zorba the Buddha. First I am a Zorba, and then I am a Buddha. And remember, if I have to choose between the two, I will choose Zorba, not Buddha… because the Zorba can always become the Buddha, but the Buddha becomes confined to his own holiness. He cannot go to the disco and become the Zorba. And to me, freedom is the highest value; there is nothing greater, more precious, than freedom.

My enlightenment has freed me from everything, including enlightenment.

Now will be the crucial point. Those who trust me will trust me even when I am drinking champagne, because there was no condition. You had not told me, “I will trust you only until you start drinking champagne.” The trust is unconditional.

The heart knows different ways of seeing. The mind is linear, it looks only towards one line. The heart is multi-dimensional. And the more I feel my peoples trust, the more dimensions of my being I can reveal to them.

I would like you to know me in my total freedom, because that is what I want you to be – totally free, no strings attached.

Blessed is the sannyasin who can trust me without bothering about my statements or my actions. His is the kingdom of God right now!

Osho, From Death to Deathlessness, Ch 3, Q 2