Growing Old or Growing Up? - by Osho

Growing Old or Growing Up?

I’m feeling loving towards people, feeling warmth, but I don’t feel very sexual. I don’t know if my sexuality is slightly repressed or if it’s okay.


There’s no need to feel sexual — and there is no need to be worried about it. Just feel loving and warm. That one has to remember, that one should not become cold. If one starts feeling cold, then it is a problem. And if sex disappears completely, there is no problem; warmth should not disappear.

It almost always happens together. When people’s sex disappears, their warmth disappears. When their warmth comes, their sexuality comes. That’s why people think that sexuality and warmth are two aspects of the same energy. They are not.

It is a good experience to be warm and non-sexual. Then you are growing; then you are really growing. Just to grow older is not real growth. To be grown is not to be a grown up. Growing up means exactly what it says: growing up, growing upwards. And this is a beautiful step — that one retains the warmth, and sex by and by disappears. Sex is beautiful because of its warmth; there is nothing else. So if you can retain the warmth when sex disappears, perfectly good; as it should be. Then the goal is preserved, and only the non-essential is gone. Never lose sight of warmth. Sex is not an essential thing; warmth is essential.

So everything is going well. Don’t force sexuality on yourself, otherwise that will be a destructive step. Be more and more warm. There is no need to become anti-sexual. There is no need to repress sexuality. If sometimes just your warmth takes you into sex, it’s okay, it’s beautiful. But if you go into it because of the warmth, then the motive is warmth, not sex. It happens, but it is the periphery. The center remains your loving heart, your warmth.


The Passion for the Impossible