Radha, in her book Tantra, a way of living and loving, tells how, during her years in Puna, in the Osho Commune, through an unusual practice suggested by Osho, she succeeded for the first time in opening up so totally to her sexual energy to be able to expand the orgasmic sensation throughout her body and not just during the sexual act …
“Chinmaya wrote to tell me that he had become “brahmacharya” and had shaved his head. I wasn’t sure what “brahmacharya” meant — I had a vague idea that he was going to be celibate with everyone except me — but a few days later, while still in Italy, I decided to shave my head as well, causing everybody around me to think I had head lice. Back in Pune, the bomb dropped. Chinmaya explained that “brahmacharya” meant that he wasn’t going to have sex with anyone, including me. A couple of days later, I went to see Osho and said, “Well, now Chinmaya is brahmacharya, so what about me? Should I find a new boyfriend?” He smiled and said,
“Why? You have known the relaxation of sex, now you should know the power of celibacy.”
And everyone should know both. Unless you have known both you haven’t known the full map. So I decided to become celibate. Chinmaya and I were meeting every day and in the beginning it was a bit awkward, lying together, knowing that we were not going to make love. But then, to my surprise and delight, it became one of the most beautiful experiences. Knowing that we did not have to do anything, to come to any end, to complete anything, created such a relaxation, such an openness between Chinmaya and myself — plus, of course, so much meditation that we were doing together — that it opened the doors of my sexuality in a totally different way. On a biological level, I guess the fact that I was only twenty-one years old, a time when young people’s sex hormone levels are very high, strengthened the experience. The energy was building and building, pumping through my system. As the energy built up between us without being released, just looking into each other’s eyes became a sexual experience, sending ripples of electricity through my body; just touching fingers became an erotic, almost orgasmic sensation. The feeling spread beyond any personal relationship. We were lying together, we were touching, we were looking into each other’s eyes and yet it was as if everything was making love with me, to me, for me. It became so intense that I started to have the same experience with nature.
Everything I looked at, the leaves of the trees, the flowers, or listening to the birds, gave me — at least for a few hours a day — an orgasmic feeling throughout my body.
Paradoxically, becoming celibate had connected me with my sexual energy for the first time in my life. I realized that, up to my relationship with Chinmaya, I had been suffering from a kind of frigidity. I had experienced sex, so I don’t mean frigid in the sense of not being able to “do it.” But there was a certain disconnection with my own energy, as if my mind had been directing the show, not my physical body. Perhaps you have had similar experiences: times when you think you’re really turned on, you really want to be with a certain person — “Wow, he’s so good-looking!” — and you think it’s really happening, but in fact it’s only an idea. It’s your mind that wants these things and if you ‘listen’ carefully to your body you can feel that it is not responding in the same way. I think this kind of frigidity is very common, not only in women but also in men. We are so full of ideas about romance, dating, making love, who we find attractive, what we are supposed to do in bed, that we don’t listen to our own energy. And in that way we deny ourselves our sensual, sexual and orgasmic potential. Going into celibacy with Chinmaya gave me this valuable gift, teaching me how to be more in contact with my body, with my sexual energy, and in this way we stayed together for a year — a year that can be called the most sexless yet the most sexual of my life.”
