Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

      

The meditations and practices of Tantra were born, legend has it, out of a conversation

between two lovers, Shiva and his consort, Devi, some 5,000 years ago. Shiva and Devi,

entwined in a lover's embrace, were discussing the mysteries of the universe. Shiva, inspired

by his lover's intense desire to know the meaning of existence, composed 112 sutras that were

designed to give her the direct experience of how the universe came into being . . . a direct

experience in her body.

Devi Asks:

O Shiva, what is your reality?

What is this wonder-filled universe?

What constitutes seed?

Who centers the universal wheel?

What is this life beyond form pervading forms?

How may we enter it fully, above space and time, names and descriptions?

Let my doubts be cleared!?

Shiva replies:

1. Radiant One, this experience may dawn between two breaths. After breath comes in (down)

and just before turning up (out) - the beneficence.

2. As breath turns from down to up, and again as breath curves up to down - through both

these turns, realize.

3. Or, whenever in-breath and out-breath fuse, at this instant touch the energy-less, energyfilled

center.

4. Or, when breath is all out (up) and stopped of itself, or all in (down) and stopped - in such

universal pause, one's small self vanishes. This is difficult only for the impure.

5. Attention between eyebrows, let mind be before thought. Let form fill with breath essence

to the top of the head and there shower as light.

6. When in worldly activities, keep attention between two breaths, and so practicing, in a few

days be born anew.

7. With intangible breath in center of forehead, as this reaches the heart at the moment of

sleep, have direction over dreams and over death itself.

8. With utmost devotion, center on the two junctions of breath and know the knower.

9. Lie down as dead. Enraged in wrath, stay so. Or stare without moving an eyelash. Or suck

something and become the sucking.

10. While being caressed, Sweet Princess, enter the caress as everlasting life.

11. Stop the doors of the senses when feeling the creeping of an ant. Then.

12. When on a bed or a seat, let yourself become weightless, beyond mind.

13. Or, imagine the five coloured circles of the peacock tail to be your five senses in

illimitable space. Now let their beauty melt within. Similarly, at any point in space or on the

wall - until the point dissolves. Then your wish for another comes true.

14. Place your whole attention in the nerve, delicate as the lotus thread, in the center of your

spinal column. In such be transformed.

15. Closing the seven openings of the head with your hands, a space between your eyes

becomes all-inclusive.

16. Blessed One, as senses are absorbed in the heart, reach the center of the lotus.

17. Unminding mind, keep in the middle - until.

18. Look lovingly at some object. Do not go to another object. Here in the middle of the

object - the blessing.

19. Without support for feet or hands, sit only on the buttocks. Suddenly the centering.

20. In a moving vehicle, by rhythmically swaying, experience. Or in a still vehicle, by letting

yourself swing in slowing invisible circles.

21. Pierce some part of you nectar filled form with a pin, and gently enter the piercing and

attain to the inner purity.

22. Let attention be at a place where you are seeing some past happening, and even your form,

having lost its present characteristics, is transformed.

23. Feel an object before you. Feel the absence of all other objects but this one. Then leaving

aside the object-feeling And the absence-feeling, Realize

24. When a mood against someone or for someone arises, Do not place it on the person in

question, but remain centered.

25. Just as you have the impulse to do something, Stop.

26. When some desire comes, consider it. Then, suddenly, quit it.

27. Roam about until exhausted and then, dropping to the ground, in this dropping be whole.

28. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength or of knowledge. At the instant of

deprivation, transcend.

29. Devotion frees.

30. Eyes closed, See your inner being in detail. Thus see your true nature.

31. Look upon a bowl without seeing the sides or the material. In a few moments become

aware.

32. See as if for the first time a beauteous person or an ordinary object.

33. Simply by looking into the blue sky beyond the clouds, The serenity.

34. Listen while the ultimate mystical teaching is imparted. Eyes still, without blinking, at

once, become absolutely free.

35. At the edge of a deep well look steadily into its depths until - the wondrousness.

36. Look upon some object, then slowly withdraw your sight from it, then slowly withdraw

your thought from it. Then.

37. Devi, imagine Sanskrit letters in these honey filled foci of awareness, first as letters, then

more subtly as sounds, then as most subtle feeling. Then, leaving them aside, be free.

38. Bathe in the center of sound, as in the continuous sound of a waterfall. Or, by putting the

fingers in the ears, Hear the sound of sounds.

39. Intone a sound, as AUM Slowly, As sound enters soundfulness, So do you.

40. In the beginning and gradual refinement of the sound of any letter, Awake.

41. While listening to stringed instruments, hear their composite central sound; thus

omnipresence.

42. Intone a sound audibly, then less and less audibly as feeling deepens into this silent

harmony.

43. With mouth slightly open, keep mind in the middle of the tongue. Or, as breath comes

silently in, feel the sound 'HH'.

44. Center on the sound 'AUM' Without any 'A' or 'M'.

45. Silently intone a word ending in 'AH'. Then in the 'HH', effortlessly, the spontaneity.

46. Stopping ears by pressing and the rectum by contracting, Enter the sound.

47. Enter the sound of your name and, through this sound, All sounds.

48. At the start of sexual union keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, And so continuing,

avoid the embers in the end.

49. When in such embrace your senses are shaken as leaves, enter this shaking.

50. Even remembering union, Without the embrace, Transformation.

51. On joyously seeing a long-absent friend, permeate this joy.

52. When eating or drinking, become the taste of food or drink, and be filled.

53. O lotus eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and

discover the Everliving.

54. Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatever act, Actualize this.

55. At the point of sleep, when the sleep has not yet come and the external wakefulness

vanishes, at this point Being is revealed.

56. Illusions deceive, colors circumscribe, even divisibles are indivisible.

57. In moods of extreme desire, be undisturbed.

58. This so-called universe appears as a juggling, A picture show. To be happy, look upon it

so.

59. O Beloved, put attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between these.

60. Objects and desires exist in me as in others. So accepting, let them be transformed.

61. As waves come with water and flames with fire, so the Universal waves with us.

62. Wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this.

63. When vividly aware through some particular sense, keep in the awareness.

64. At the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety, above a chasm, flying in battle, in

extreme curiosity, at the beginning of hunger, at the end of hunger, be uninterruptedly aware.

65. The purity of other teachings is an impurity to us. In reality, know nothing as pure or

impure.

66. Be the unsame same to friend as to stranger, in honor and dishonor.

67. Here is the sphere of change, change, change. Through change consume change.

68. As a hen mothers her chicks, mother particular knowing, particular doings, in reality.

69. Since, in truth, bondage and freedom are relative, these words are only for those terrified

with the universe. This universe is a reflection of minds. As you see many suns in water from

one sun, so see bondage and liberation.

70. Consider your essence as light rays from center to center up the vertebrae, and so rises

"livingness" in you.

71. Or in the spaces between, feel this as lightning.

72. Feel the cosmos as a translucent ever-living presence.

73. In summer when you see the entire sky endlessly clear, Enter such clarity.

74. Shakhty, see all space as if already absorbed in your own head in the brilliance.

75. Waking, sleeping, dreaming, know you as light.

76. In rain during a black night, enter that blackness as the form of forms.

77. When a moonless rainy night is not present, close your eyes, see blackness. So, faults

disappear forever.

78. Whenever your attention alights, at this very point, Experience.

79. Focus on fire rising through your form from the toes up until the body burns to ashes but

not you.

80. Meditate on the make believe world as burning to ashes, and become being above human.

81. As, subjectively, letters flow into words and words into sentences, and as, objectively,

circles flow into worlds and worlds into principles, find at last these converging in our being.

82. Feel: my thought, I-nests, internal organs - me.

83. Before desire and before knowing, how can I say I am Consider. Dissolve in the beauty.

84. Toss attachment for body aside, realizing I am everywhere. One who is everywhere is

joyous.

85. Thinking no thing will limited-self unlimited.

86. Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not

being - you.

87. I am existing. This is mine. This is this. O, beloved, even in such know illimitably.

88. Each thing is perceived through knowing. The self shines in space through knowing.

Perceive one being as knower and known.

89. Beloved, At this moment, let mind, knowing, breath, form, be included.

90. Touching eyeballs as a feather, lightness between them opens into the heart and there

permeates the cosmos.

91. Kind Devi, enter enteric presence pervading far above and below your form.

92. Put mind stuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart.

93. Consider any area of your present form as limitlessly spacious.

94. Feel your substance, bones, flesh, blood, saturated with cosmic essence.

95. Feel the fine qualities of creativity permeating your breasts and assuming delicate

configurations.

96. Abide in some place endlessly spacious, clear of trees, hills, habitations. Thence comes

the end of mind pressures.

97. Consider the plenum to be your own body of bliss.

98. In any easy position, gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace.

99. Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near.

100. The appreciation of objects and subjects is the same for an enlightened as for an

unenlightened person. The former has one greatness: He remains in the subjective mood, not

lost in things.

101. Believe omniscient, omnipotent, pervading.

102. Imagine spirit simultaneously within and around you until the entire universe

spiritualizes.

103. With your entire consciousness in the very start of desire, of knowing, know.

104. O Shakhty, Each particular perception is limited, disappearing in omnipotence.

105. In truth forms are in separate. In separate are omnipresent being and your own form.

Realize each as made of this consciousness.

106. Feel the consciousness of each person as your own consciousness. So, leaving aside

concern for your self, become each being.

107. This consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists.

108. This consciousness is the spirit of guidance of each one. Be this one.

109. Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin - empty.

110. Gracious One, play. The universe is an empty shell wherein your mind frolics infinitely.

111. Sweet heartened One, meditate on knowing and not-knowing, existing and non-existing.

Then leave both aside that you may be.

112. Enter space, support less, eternal, still.

Vigyan Bhairab Tantra

About light to a blind man, this is intellectual. If the blind man himself becomes capable of seeing, this is existential. This is what I mean when I say that tantra is existential. So  this is a different type of language. You must know something about it before we enter into it. All the tantra treatises are dialogues between Shiva and Devi. Devi questions and Shiva answers. All the tantra treatises start that way. Why? Why this method? It is very significant.

It is not a dialogue between a teacher and a disciple, it is a dialogue between two lovers. And tantra signifies through it a very meaningful thing: that the deeper teachings cannot be given unless there is love between the two - the disciple and the master. The disciple and master must become deep lovers. Only then can the higher, the beyond, be expressed.

So it is a language of love; the disciple must be in an attitude of love. But not only this, because friends can be lovers. Tantra says a disciple moves as receptivity, so the disciple must be in a feminine receptivity; only then is something possible. You need not be a woman to be a disciple, but you need to be in a feminine attitude of receptivity. When Devi asks, it means the feminine attitude asks. Why this emphasis on the feminine attitude?

Man and woman are not only physically different, they are psychologically different. Sex is not only a difference in the body; it is a difference in psychologies also. A feminine mind means receptivity - total receptivity, surrender, love. A disciple needs a feminine psychology; otherwise he will not be able to learn. You can ask, but if you are not open then you cannot be answered. You can ask a question and still remain closed. Then the answer cannot penetrate you. Your doors are closed; you are dead. You are not open.

A feminine receptivity means a womb-like receptivity in the inner depth, so that you can receive.

And not only that - much more is implied. A woman is not only receiving something, the moment she receives it, it becomes a part of her body. A child is received. A woman conceives; the moment there is conception, the child has become part of the feminine body. It is not alien, it is not foreign. It has been absorbed. Now the child will live not as something added to the mother, but just as a part, just as the mother. And the child is not only received: the feminine body becomes creative; the child begins to grow.

A disciple needs a womb-like receptivity. Whatsoever is received is not to be gathered as dead knowledge. It must grow in you; it must become blood and bones in you. It must become a part, now. It must grow! This growth will change you, will transform you - the receiver. That is why tantra uses this device. Every treatise starts with Devi asking a question and Shiva replying to it. Devi is Shiva's consort, his feminine part.

One thing more.... Now modern psychology, depth psychology particularly, says that man is both man and woman. No one is just male and no one is just female; everyone is bi-sexual. Both sexes are there. This is a very recent research in the West, but for tantra this has been one of the most basic concepts for thousands of years. You must have seen some pictures of Shiva as ARDHANARISHWAR - half man, half woman. There is no other concept like it in the whole history of man. Shiva is depicted as half man, half woman.

Vigyan Bhairab Tantra

it. Then you will see the beauty, and the ugliness will remain behind, never to be seen directly. Everyone else will see it - that is the problem. The son will see that the father is not angry for his good. He will see that the father is angry because he has been disobeyed and he feels hurt; the son will know it.

You cannot hide your ugliness from others. You can hide it only from yourself. Your look will reveal to everyone that there is violence.You can only deceive yourself that there was compassion.

That is why everyone thinks of himself as a very superior being, and no one else agrees with him.

Your wife doesn't agree with you that you are a superior being. Your children are not in agreement with you that you are a superior being. Your friends do not agree, no one agrees with you, that you are a superior being.

They have a popular saying in Russia that if everyone says their mind totally, exactly as it is, there will not be four friends in the whole world. Impossible! Whatsoever your friend thinks about you, he never says to you. That is why friendship continues. But he is always saying things behind you, and you are saying what you think about your friend behind him. No one says honestly what he thinks because then there will be no possibility of any friendship. Why? No one agrees with you, and the reason is only this: you can only deceive yourself; you cannot deceive anyone else. Only self-deception is possible.

And when you think you are deceiving others you are simply deceiving yourself. It may be that others pretend to you that they have been deceived by you, because there are moments when it is convenient to play the role of being deceived. It may be beneficial for the person. You talk to someone about your greatness... Everyone is talking directly or indirectly about his greatness, his superiority. Someone may agree with you. If it is beneficial to him he will pretend to you that he is being deceived by you, but he knows inside who you are.

You cannot deceive anyone unless someone is ready to be deceived; that is another thing. By authenticity I mean: remember your facticity. Always sort it out from your interpretations. Throw away your interpretations and look at the fact of what you are. And do not be afraid - much ugliness is there. If you are afraid, then you will never be able to change it. If it is there, accept that it is there; consider it.

This is what consideration means: consider it, look at it in its total nakedness. Move around it, go to its roots, analyze it. See why it is there, how you help it to be there, how you feed it, how you protect it, how it has grown to be such a big tree. See your ugliness, your violence, your hatred, your anger, how you have protected it, how you have helped it to grow up to now. Look at the roots; look at the whole phenomenon.

And Shiva says That if you consider it totally you can drop it immediately, this very moment, because it is you who have been protecting it. It is you who have been helping it to become rooted in you. It is your creation. You can drop it immediately - just now. You can leave it, and then there is no need to look again toward it. But before you can do this, you will have to know it - what it is, the whole mechanism, the whole complexity of it, how you help it every moment.

If someone says something insulting to you, how do you react? Have you ever thought about it - that he may be right? Then look! He may be right. There is every possibility of him being more right than you are about yourself, because he is aloof, far away; he can observe.

So do not react. Wait! Tell him, "I will consider what you have said. You have insulted me, and I will consider the fact. You may be right. If you are right, then I will give you my thanks. Let me consider it. And if I find that you are wrong I will inform you." But do not react. Reaction is different.

If you insult me, I say to you, instead of reacting, "Wait. Come back after seven days. I will consider whatsoever you have said - you may be right. I will put myself in your place and will observe myself; I will create a distance. You may be right, so let me look at the fact. It is very kind of you to have pointed it out, so I will look at it. If I feel that you are right, I will thank you; if I feel that you are wrong, I will inform you that you are wrong." But what is the need of reaction?

You insult me - then what do I do? I insult you immediately then and there. I escape consideration:

I have reacted. You insulted me, so I have insulted you.

And remember, reaction can never be right. It can NEVER be right! If you insult me, you create the possibility of my being angry. And when I am angry I am not conscious, I will say something which I have never thought about you. This very moment, because of your insults I react in a violent way. A moment later I may repent.

Do not react - consider the facts. And if your consideration is total, you can drop anything. It is in your hands. Because you are clinging to it, it is there. But you can drop it immediately, and there will be no suppression - remember. When you have considered a fact, there will never be any suppression. Either you like it and you continue it, or you do not like it and you drop it.

The second question:

Question 2:

ACCORDING TO LAST NIGHT'S TECHNIQUE,
WHEN ANGER, VIOLENCE, SEX, ETC., ARISES,
ONE SHOULD CONSIDER IT AND THEN SUDDENLY QUIT IT.
BUT WHEN ONE DOES IT, ONE SOMETIMES FEELS SICK AND UNEASY.
WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THESE NEGATIVE FEELINGS?

Only one reason: your consideration is not total. Everyone wants to quit anger without understanding it; everyone wants to quit sex without understanding it. And there is no revolution without understanding. You will create more problems and you will create more misery for yourself. Do not think of renouncing anything, just think of how to understand it: understanding, not renunciation.

There is no need of thinking to quit anything. The only need is to understand it in its totality. If you have understood it in its totality, the transformation will follow. If it is good for you, if it is good for your being, it will grow. If it is bad for you, it will drop. So the real thing is not quitting, it is understanding.

average mind. This attitude is because of a particular hypothesis that mind is the end and there is no beyond.

Just opposite to this attitude is the Eastern approach. We say here that mind itself is the disease. So whether normal or abnormal, we will make only the distinction of "normally ill" and "abnormally ill." A normal men is normally ill. He is not so much ill that you can detect it, he is just average. Because everyone else is like him, his illness cannot be detected. Even the person, the psychoanalyst who treats him, is himself a normally ill person. Mind itself is the disease for us.

Words of the Enlightened Master, Osho on Tilopa

The Tantra attitude is the very being of Tilopa. You must understand first what the Tantra attitude is, only then will it be possible for you to.. comprehend what Tilopa is trying to say. So something.. about the Tantra attitude -- the first thing: it is not an.. attitude, because Tantra looks at life with a total vision. It.. has no attitude to look at life. It has no concepts, it is not a.. philosophy. It is not even a religion, it has no theology. It.. doesn't believe in words, theories, or doctrines. It wants to.. look at life without any philosophy, without any theory,. without any theology. It wants to look at life as it is, without.. bringing any mind in between -- because that will be the.. distortion. The mind then will project, the mind then will mix -- and then you will not be able to know that which is.

Tantra avoids mind and encounters life face to face, neither thinking, "This is good," nor thinking, "This is bad": simply facing that which is. So it is difficult to say that this is an attitude -- in fact it is a no-attitude.

The second thing to remember, that Tantra is a great yea-sayer; it says yes to everything. It has nothing like "no" in its vocabulary, there is no negation. It never says no to anything, because with no the fight starts, with no you become the ego. The moment you say no to anything, you have become the ego already; a conflict has come in, now you are at war.

Tantra loves, and loves unconditionally. It never says no to anything whatsoever, because everything is part of the whole, and everything has its own place in the whole, and the whole cannot exist without anything missing from it.

It is said that even if a drop of water is missing, the whole existence will thirst. You pluck a flower in the garden, and you have plucked something out of the whole existence. You harm a flower, and you have harmed millions of stars -- because everything is interrelated. The whole exists as a whole, as an organic whole. The whole exists not as a mechanical thing -- everything is related to everything else.

Tantra says yes unconditionally. There has never been any other vision of life which says yes without any conditions -- simply yes. No disappears; from your very being no disappears. When there is no no, how can you fight? How can you be at war? You simply float. You simply merge and melt. You become one. The boundaries are there no more. No creates the boundary. No is the boundary around you. Whenever you say no, watch -- immediately something closes in. Whenever you say yes, your being opens.

One who renounces is not a religious person. In the view of Tantra, one who renounces is an egoist. First he was accumulating things of the world, but his attention was on the world. Now he renounces, but his attention is again on the world and he remains the egoist. The ego has subtle ways of fulfilling itself and coming again and again, in spirals. Again and again it comes back -- with a new face, with new colors.

This is the mind: it persists, it comes in spirals -- again and again to the same thing. You can renounce the world, but you will not become other-worldly; you will remain very worldly. Nobody has ever reached to the divine by saying no to anything.

Tantra says: "You say yes. You say yes to everything. You need not fight, you need not even swim -- you simply float with the current. The river is going by itself, on its own accord, everything reaches to the ultimate ocean. You simply don't create any disturbance, you don't push the river, you simply go with it." That going with it, floating with it, relaxing with it, is Tantra.

If you can say yes, a deep acceptance happens to you. If you say yes, how can you be complaining? How can you be miserable? Then everything is as it should be. You are not fighting, not denying -- you accept. And remember, this acceptance is different from ordinary acceptance.

Ordinarily a person accepts a situation when he feels helpless; that is impotent acceptance. That will not lead you anywhere; impotence cannot lead you anywhere. A person accepts a situation when he feels hopeless: "Nothing can be done, so what to do? At least accept, to save face." Tantra acceptance is not that type of acceptance. It comes out of an over fulfillment, it comes out of a deep contentment -- not out of hopelessness, frustration, helplessness. It comes when you don't say no, it suddenly surfaces in you. Your whole being becomes a deep contentment.

That acceptance has a beauty of its own. It is not forced; you have not practiced for it. If you practice, it will be false, it will be a hypocrisy. If you practice, you will be split in two: on the outside it will be acceptance; deep down, the turmoil, the negation, the denial. Deep down you will be boiling up to explode any moment. Just on the surface you will pretend that everything is okay.

Tantra acceptance is total, it doesn't split you. All the religions of the world, except Tantra, have created split personalities. All the religions of the world, except Tantra, have created schizophrenia. They split you. They make something bad in you and something good. And they say the good has to be achieved and the bad denied, the devil has to be denied and God accepted. They create a split within you and a fight. Then you are continuously feeling guilty, because how can you destroy the part that is organically one with you? You may call it bad, you may call it names; that doesn't make any difference. How can you destroy it? You never created it. You have simply found it -- given. Anger is there, sex is there, greed is there -- you have not created them; they are given facts of life, just like your eyes and your hands. You can call them names, you can call them ugly or beautiful or whatsoever you like, but you cannot kill them.

Nothing can be killed out of existence, nothing can be destroyed.

Tantra says a transformation is possible, but not destruction. And a transformation comes when you accept your total being. Then suddenly everything falls in line, then everything takes its own place; then anger is also absorbed, then greed is also absorbed. Then without trying to cut anything out of your being, your whole being rearranges itself. If you accept and say yes, a rearrangement happens, and whereas before there was a noisy clamor inside, now a melody, a music is born, a harmony comes in.

In noise and in harmony, what is the difference? The same sound waves arranged in a different way. In a noise there is no center; the notes are the same. A madman playing on the piano; the notes are the same, the sound is the same, but a madman playing -- it has no center to it. If you can give center to noise it becomes music, then it converges on a center and everything becomes organic.

If a madman is playing on the piano, then every note is separate, individual; it is a crowd of notes, not a melody. And when a musician plays on the same piano with the same fingers, there comes an alchemical change: now the same notes have fallen into a pattern, the same notes have joined into an organic unity, now they have a center to them. Now they are not a crowd, now they are a family; a subtle love joins them together -- now they are one. And that is the whole art: to bring notes into a loving phenomenon -- they become harmonious.

Tantra says you are a noise right now as you are. Nothing is wrong in it -- simply you don't have a center. Once you have a center, everything falls in line, and everything becomes beautiful.

When Gurdjieff gets angry it is beautiful. When you get angry it is ugly. Anger is neither ugly nor beautiful. When Jesus gets angry it is sheer music -- even anger. When Jesus takes a whip in the temple and chases out the traders, out of the temple, there is a subtle beauty to it. Even Buddha lacks that beauty; Buddha seems to be one-sided. It seems anger has nothing in it to play; the tension of anger, the salt of it is not there. Buddha doesn't taste as good as Jesus. Jesus has a little salt in him, he can get angry -- even his anger has become part of his whole being; nothing has been denied, everything has been accepted.

But Tilopa is incomparable. Jesus is nothing.... The Tantra masters are simply wild flowers, they have everything in them. You must have seen Bodhidharma pictures; if you have not seen, look again -- so ferocious that if you meditate on Bodhidharma's picture in the night, alone, you will not be able to sleep: he will haunt you. It is said of him that once he looked at anybody, that man would have nightmares continuously. He would haunt him; the very look, so ferocious. When Bodhidharma or Tilopa spoke, it is said their speaking was like a lion's roar, a thundercloud, a tremendous waterfall -- wild, fiery.

But if you wait a little and don't judge them too soon, you will find within them the most loving of all hearts. Then you will feel the music, the melody in them. And then suddenly you will realize that they have not denied anything; they have absorbed everything, even ferociousness. A lion is beautiful, even its ferociousness has a beauty of its own. You take the ferociousness out of a lion and he is just a stuffed lion, dead.

Tantra says everything has to be absorbed, everything! -- remember, without any condition. Sex has to be absorbed, then it becomes a tremendous force in you. A Buddha, a Tilopa, a Jesus, they have such a magnetic force around them -- what is that? Sex absorbed. Sex is human magnetism. Suddenly you fall into their love. Once you come across their path, you are being pulled to a different world altogether. You are torn from your old world, and you are being pulled to something new, something that you never even dreamt about. What is this force? It is the same sex which has become transformed; now it has become a magnetism, a charisma. Buddha has anger absorbed; that very anger becomes compassion. And when Jesus takes the whip in his hand, it is because of compassion. When Jesus talks in fire, this is same compassion.

Remember this, that Tantra accepts you in your totality. When you come to me, I accept you in your totality. I am not here to help you deny anything. I am here only to help you to rearrange, to get a center of all your energies, to converge them to a center. And I tell you that you will be richer if you have anger absorbed in it; you will be richer if you have sex absorbed in it; you will be richer if you have hatred, jealousy, absorbed into it -- they are the spices of life, and you will taste.... You will not become tasteless, you will have an enrichment to your taste. You need a little salt. And anger is exactly in the same amount as it is needed. When it overpowers you, then it becomes ugly. If you eat only salt then you will die. Salt has a proportion, and in the proportion it is needed, absolutely needed. Remember this.

On the path you will meet many people who would like to cripple you, to cut you, to dissect you. They will say, "This hand is bad, cut it off! This eye is bad, throw it out! Anger is bad, hate is bad, sex is bad." They will go on cutting you, and by the time they have left you, you are simply paralyzed, a crippled one. You have no life left. That's how the whole civilization has become paralyzed and crippled.

Unless Tantra becomes the foundation of the whole human mind, man will not be complete -- because no other vision accepts man in his totality. But the acceptance, remember again, is of overflowing, it is not of impotence.

One lives one's life, one goes through it: each shade of it has to be lived, and each taste of it has to be tasted. Even the wandering, even going astray is meaningful, because if you never go astray you will not achieve to an enriched enlightenment, you will never be simple. You may be a simpleton, but you will never be simple -- and a simpleton is not simple.

Simplicity needs a very deep and complex experience behind it. A simpleton is simply without experience. He may be a fool, but he cannot be a sage. A sage is one who has lived all the sins of life, who has not denied anything, who has not called anything a sin, who has simply accepted whatsoever has happened, who has allowed it to happen; who has moved with every wave, who has drifted, who went astray, who fell down to the very hell.

Nietzsche has said, "If a tree wants to reach to the sky, its roots need to go to the very hell." He's right. If you want a real flowering into the sky, your roots will need to go to the deepest hell in the earth.

Tantra accepts everything, lives everything. That's why Tantra never could become a very accepted ideology. It always remained a fringe ideology, just somewhere on the boundary outside of society. Civilization has chosen to deny, to say no to many things. Civilization is not courageous enough to accept all, to accept everything that life gives.

The greatest courage in the world is to accept all that life gives to you. And this is what I am trying to help you towards, to accept all that life gives you, and accept it in deep humbleness, as a gift. And when I say this, even those things which society has conditioned you to call wrong and bad. Accept sex, and then there will come a flowering out of it; a brahmacharya will come, a purity, an innocence will come; a virginity will come out of it -- but that will be a transcendence.

Through experience one transcends.

Moving in the dark alleys of life one's eyes become trained, and one starts seeing the light even in darkness. What beauty is there if you can see light while there is day! The beauty is there when there is the darkest night, and your eyes are so trained into darkness that you can see the day hidden there. When in the darkest night you can see the morning, then there is beauty, then you have achieved. When in the lowest you can see the highest, when even in hell you can create a heaven, then, then you have become the artist of life. And Tantra wants to make you the artists of life -- not deniers, but great yea-sayers.

Accept, and, by and by, you will feel the more you accept, the less is there desire. If you accept, how can desire stand there? Whatsoever the case is in this moment, you accept it. Then there is no movement for anything else. You live it moment to moment in deep acceptance. You grow without there being any goal, without there being any desire to go somewhere and be something else or somebody else.

Tantra says, "Be yourself" -- and that is the only being you can achieve ever. With acceptance desires fall. With acceptance, a desirelessness comes into being by itself. You don't practice it, you don't force it upon yourself. You don't cut your desires -- just by accepting, they disappear.

And when suddenly one moment happens that you accept totally and all desires have gone, there is a sudden enlightenment. Suddenly, without doing anything on your part, it happens. That's the greatest gift this existence can give to you.

This is the Tantra attitude towards life. There is no other life than this, and there is no other world than this. This very samsara is the nirvana. Just you have to be a little more understanding, more accepting, more childlike, less egoistic.

Extract from Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, by Osho

QUESTION ANSWER ON TANTRA VISION THE ROYAL SONG OF TILOPA

The first question -- it is from Prabha:

Question 1

DEAR OSHO, HINGLE DE JE, BIPITY JANG DANG -- DO RUN NUN, DE JUN BUNG. HINGLE DE JIBBITY DANGELY JI.



THIS IS WONDERFUL, PRABHA! THIS IS BEAUTIFUL. This is just far out, baby. I am driving you sane. Just a step more... and the Enlightenment.



The second question:

Question 2

IS PRAYER USEFUL? IF SO, TEACH ME HOW TO PRAY. I MEAN, PRAYER TO RECEIVE GOD'S LOVE, TO FEEL HIS GRACE.



FIRST, PRAYER IS NOT USEFUL -- not at all. Prayer has no use, no utility. It is not a commodity. You cannot use it; it is not a thing. It is not a MEANS to anything else -- how can you use it?

I can understand the questioner's mind. The so-called religions have been teaching people that prayer is a means to God. It is not! Prayer is God. It is not a MEANS towards anything -- to be prayerful is the end in itself. When you are prayerful, you are divine. Not that the prayer leads you towards the Divine: in prayerfulness you discover your divinity.

Prayer is not a means. It is the end unto itself.

But this fallacy has persisted down the centuries in man's mind. Love is also a means, so is prayer, so is meditation -- all that is impossible to reduce to means has been reduced. And that's why the beauty is lost.

Love is useless, so is prayer, so is meditation.

When you ask: "Is prayer useful?" you don't understand what the word'prayer' means. You are greedy. You want God, you want to grab God; now you are finding ways and means to grab. And God cannot be grabbed!

YOU cannot possess God. You cannot contain God. You cannot interpret God. You cannot experience God. Then what can be done about God? Only one thing: you can be God. Nothing else can be done about it -- because you ARE God. Recognize it or not, realize it or not, but you are God. And only that can be done which is already there; only that can be done which has already happened. Nothing new can be added... only revelation, only discovery.

So, the first thing: prayer is not any utility. The moment you use prayer, you make it ugly. That is a sacrilege! to use prayer. And whosoever has said to you to use prayer has been not only irreligious but anti-religious. He does not understand what he is saying. He is talking nonsense.

Be prayerful, not because it has some utility, but because it is a joy. Be prayerful, not because through it you will arrive anywhere, but THROUGH IT YOU ARE! THROUGH IT YOU START BEING. Through it you are present: without it you are absent. It is not a goal somewhere in the future; it is a discovery of the presence that is already there, that is already the case.

And don't think in terms of things, otherwise prayer becomes part of economics, not part of religion. If it is a means, then it is part of economics. All means are part of economics. Ends are beyond economics. Religion is concerned with the end, not with the means. Religion is not concerned at all with reaching somewhere. Religion is concerned only with one thing: to know where we are!

To celebrate this moment is prayer. To be herenow is prayer. To listen to these birds is prayer. To feel the presence of people around you is prayer. To touch a tree with love is prayer. To look at a child with deep respect, with reverence for life, is prayer.

So, first thing: don't ask "Is prayer useful?"

And then the second thing you say: "If so, teach me how to pray."

If you start by'if', prayer cannot be taught. The VERY beginning with'if' is the beginning of doubt.'If' is not part of a prayerful mind. Prayer needs trust; there is no'if'. It is so. It is absolutely so.

When you can trust the unknown, the invisible, the unmanifest, then there is prayer. If you start by'if', then prayer will be at most a hypothesis. Then prayer will be a theory, and prayer is not a theory. Prayer is not a thing, not a theory -- prayer is an experience. You cannot start by if.

The very beginning goes wrong. You have taken a step in the wrong direction. Drop ifs and you will be in prayer. Drop ALL ifs, don't live life through hypothetical things: "If this is so, if there is God, then I will pray." But how can you pray if God is just an if? If God is just'as if', then your prayer will also be just'as if'. It will be an empty gesture. You will bow down, you will utter a few words, but your heart will not be there. The heart is never with ifs.

Science works through ifs: religion does not work through ifs.

You are asking: "If there is love, then teach me love." IF there is love? Then nothing has stirred in your heart, then the spring has not come, and that breeze has not touched you which is called love. You must have heard somebody else talking about love. You must have read in some book; you must have been reading romantic poetry. The word 'love' has come to you, but there has been not a single moment of love experience... so you ask: "If there is love, then teach us." But with if love cannot be taught.

Have you never experienced any moment of love, prayer, beatitude? I have never come across a single human being who is so poor. Have you not ever listened to the silence of the night? Have you not ever been thrilled by it? touched by it? transformed by it? Have you never seen a sun rising on the horizon? Have you never felt like a deep interrelationship with the rising sun? Have you not felt more life in you, pouring from everywhere? Maybe for a moment.... Have you never held the hand of a human being and something started flowing from you to him and from him to you? Have you never experienced when two human spaces overlap and flow into each other? Have you never seen a roseflower and smelt the fragrance of it? -- and suddenly you are transported into another world?

These are moments of prayer. Don't start by if. Gather all the moments of your life which were beautiful -- they were all moments of prayer. Base your temple of prayer on those moments. Let that be the foundation, not if. The bricks of if are false. Build the foundation with certainties, with absolute certainties -- only then, ONLY then is there a possibility of your ever entering into the world of prayer. It is a great world. It has a beginning, but it has no end. It is oceanic.

So please don't say "if so". IT IS SO! And if you have not yet felt it is so, then look into your life and find out some certainties about beauty, about love, about experiences which go beyond the mind. Collect all those.

The ordinary habit of the mind is not to collect them, because they go against the logical mind. So we never take note of them. They happen, they happen to everybody. Let me repeat: Nobody is so poor. They happen to the poorest man. Man is MADE in such a way, man IS in such a way -- they are bound to happen. But we don't take note of them because they are dangerous moments. If they are real, then what will happen to our logical mind? They are very illogical moments.

Now, listening to a bird, and something starts singing within you -- this is very illogical. You cannot find out how it is happening, why it is happening -- why should it be so? The mind is at a loss. The only course left for the mind is not to take note of it, forget about it! It is just a whim -- maybe some eccentric moment, maybe you have gone temporarily mad. The mind interprets these things like this... it was nothing, just a mood. You were emotional, you were being sentimental -- that's all. There was no authentic experience in it.

This is the way to deny. Once you start denying, then you don't have any moments to base your prayer life upon. Hence the question: "If so..."

My first suggestion is: go into your life; remember all those moments. You must have been a small child collecting sea shells on a beach, and the sun was showering on you, and the wind was salty and sharp, and you were in tremendous joy. No king has ever been so joyful. You were almost at the top of the world -- you were an emperor. Remember... that is the right brick to base upon.

You were a small child running after a butterfly -- that was the moment of prayer. For the first time you fell in love with a woman or a man, and your heart was churned and stirred, and you started dreaming in a new way... that was the moment of prayer, your first love, your first friendship.

Gather from your past a few certainties about something that goes beyond the mind, which the mind cannot interpret, which the mind cannot dissect, which is simply transcendental to the mind. Collect those transcendental moments, even a few, they will do -- but then there will be no if. Then you move with certainty. Then it is not a hypothesis. Then there is trust.

If it could happen to you when you were a child, why can't it happen to you now? Why? Gather those moments of wonder! when you were thrilled.

Just the other day I was reading about a man, a very simple man, a very old man. And the English philosopher, thinker, Doctor Johnson, was staying with the old man. And in the morning when they were taking their tea, the old man said, "Dr. Johnson, you may be surprised to know that when young I also tried to become a philosopher."

Dr. Johnson asked, "Then what happened? Why could you not become a philosopher?"

The man laughed and he said, "But cheerfulness again and again erupted into my life -- cheerfulness. Because of that cheerfulness, I could not become a philosopher. Again and again -- I tried hard to repress it!"

I like that answer. Those moments of cheerfulness are moments of prayer. A philosopher cannot pray, a thinker cannot pray -- because all thinking starts with if... all thinking starts with doubt. And prayer starts with trust.

That's why Jesus says: Only those who are like small children, only they will be able to enter into the Kingdom of my God -- those whose eyes are full of wonder, for whom each moment is a moment of surprise, those whose hearts are still open to be thrilled, only they.

So first drop if, and collect some certainties -- that is the first lesson about prayer.



SECOND THING YOU SAY: "... teach me how to pray." There is no how, Prayer is not a technique. Meditation can be taught; it is a technique, it is a method. Prayer is not a method -- it is a love affair! You can pray, but prayer cannot be taught.

It happened once: Some of Jesus' disciples asked him, "Master, teach us to pray and teach us how." And what did Jesus do? you know? He acted exactly the way a Zen Master is supposed to act: he simply fell on the ground, on his knees, and started praying! They were puzzled. They looked. They must have shrugged their shoulders that "We have asked him to teach, and what is he doing? He is praying -- but how can HIS praying help us?" Later on they must have asked, and Jesus said, "But that is the only way -- there is no technique!"

Jesus prayed -- what else can you do? If they had been a little more alert, they would have sat silently by the side of Jesus, holding his hands or touching his robe... contact high. Something would have happened there.

I cannot teach you prayer, but I am prayer. And I need not fall on my knees to pray -- I am prayer. You just imbibe my being, you drink me as much as you can, my presence. And it will teach you what prayer is. EVERY morning I am teaching you what prayer is! Every moment when you come to me I am teaching you what prayer is. I am in prayer! You just be a little open. You just open your doors... Let my breeze pass through you. It is an infection -- prayer is an infection.

I cannot teach you how to pray, but I can make you prayerful. Get more in tune with my presence.

And don't keep these questions inside your mind because they will be the barriers. Just be vulnerable and it will happen. One day suddenly you will see the heart is singing, and something is dancing within you... some new energy, as if in a dark night a sudden ray of light has entered your being.

This is prayer! You cannot do it -- you can only allow it to happen. Meditation can be done -- prayer cannot be done. Meditation is more scientific that way; it can be taught. But prayer? Prayer is absolutely unscientific; it is a matter of the heart.

Feel me and you will feel prayer. Touch me... and you will touch prayer. Listen to me and you are listening to words which are full of prayer.

And then, sometime sitting silently, let there be a dialogue -- a dialogue with existence. You can call the existence God or Father or Mother -- anything is okay. But don't repeat any ritual. Don't repeat the Christian prayer, and don't repeat the Hindu prayer, don't repeat the Gayatri Mantra, and don't repeat NAMOKAR -- don't repeat any mantra, Indian, Tibetan, Chinese. Don't repeat! CREATE your own mantra: don't be a parrot. Can't you say something to God on your own? And don't rehearse it, don't prepare for it. Can't you face God directly as a small child faces his father or mother? Can't you say something to Him? Can't you say "hello"?

Let prayer happen! Don't prepare for it. A prepared prayer is a false prayer. And a repeated prayer is just a mechanical thing. You can repeat the Christian prayer -- you have crammed it, it has been forced upon you. You can repeat it in the night and fall asleep, but it will not make you aware -- because it has not been done as a response!

I have heard about a great mathematician who used to pray every night with a single word: he would look at the sky and would say "Ditto." What is the point of repeating every day the same as yesterday? What are you doing when you repeat the same prayer again and again'? -- 'ditto' is better! Why bother God every day with the same repetition? Say something if you have something to say; if you don't have something to say, just say, "I don't have anything to say today."

Or just be silent -- what is the need of saying anything? But be true -- at least between you and the Whole, let there be truth. That's what prayer is. Open your heart.

I have heard: Moses was passing through a forest, and he came across a man, a shepherd, a poor man, a dirty, poor man, with rags for clothes. And he was praying; it was prayertime and he was praying. Moses, just out of curiosity, stood behind him and listened. And he could not believe what sort of prayer this was, because he was saying, "God, when I die, allow me into your paradise -- I will take care of you. If you have lice, I will remove them." HE had lice, so certainly he says, "If you have lice I will remove them. I will give you such a good bath, and I will cook food for you -- and I cook really good things. And I will take care of your sheep. And I will prepare milk for you... and this and that. And I can do good massage too!"

Then it was too much. When he came to lice, then it was too much -- Moses just shook him and said, "What nonsense are you talking about! You will remove lice, so God has lice?"

The poor man was disturbed. He said, "I don't know exactly because I have never seen Him. But all that I know is what I know about myself: I have lice."

Moses said, "Stop! Never pray in this way! This is sacrilege -- you will fall into hell!"

The man started trembling and perspiring. He said, "But I have been doing this my whole life -- whatsoever comes to my mind, I say. And I don't know -- you teach me the right way."

And Moses teaches him the right way to pray, and the poor shepherd goes with his sheep. And then suddenly God thunders all over the forest, and God is very angry. He says to Moses, "You are mad! I have sent you into the world to bring people to me, and you are throwing my people away from me -- a lover. He was a lover; he was one of the best prayers, and you have broken his heart, you have broken his trust. You GO and apologize, and take your prayer back!"

And Moses goes and falls at the feet of the shepherd and says, "Excuse me, forgive me! I was wrong, you are right. God approves of you; my prayer has to be taken back."

Exactly that's how it should be. Let your prayer grow. Let it happen. Yes, whenever you are feeling like having a chitchat with God, wait for those moments. And there is no need to repeat it every day -- there is no need. When the feeling comes! Let it be out of your feeling; don't make a ritual out of it.

Sometimes taking a bath, sitting under the shower, and you suddenly feel the urge to pray -- let it be there. It is perfectly good; your bathroom is perfectly good -- there is no need to go to any church. In that moment when the urge is there, your bathroom is the church. Let the prayer be there. Have a little chitchat! and you will be surprised how beautiful it is. When it comes out of the heart it is heard, it is responded to.

Sometimes making love to your woman, suddenly an urge arises to pray -- pray THAT very moment! You cannot find a better moment than that; you are closest to God, you are closest to life energy. When the orgasm is showering on you... pray! But wait -- don't make it a ritual. That is the whole Tantra attitude: let things be spontaneous.

And the last thing you say: "I mean prayer to receive God's love, to feel His grace."

Again your question is wrong: "I mean prayer to receive God's love." You are greedy! Prayer is to love God. Yes, love comes from God a thousandfold, but that is not the desire: that is the outcome of it; not the result, but the consequence. Yes, love will come like a flood. You take one step towards God and God takes a thousand steps towards you. You give Him one drop, offer Him one drop of your love, and His whole ocean becomes available to you. Yes, that happens! but that should not be the desire. The desire is wrong. If you simply want God's love, and that's why you are praying, then your prayer is a bargain, then it is business. And beware of business!

In a small school somewhere in the United States, the teacher asks the boys: "Who was the greatest man in human history?" Of course, an American says, "Abraham Lincoln," and an Indian says, "Mahatma Gandhi," and an English boy says, "Winston Churchill," and so on and so forth. And then a small Jewish boy stands up and says, "Jesus," and he wins, he wins a reward. But the teacher asks him, "You are a Jew, why did you say Jesus'?"

He said, "I know all the time in my heart it is Moses -- but business is business."

Don't make prayer a business. Let it be a pure offering: just give it out of your heart. Don't ask for anything in return. Then much comes... thousandfold, millionfold, God flows towards you. But, again, remember: it is a consequence not a result.



The third question:

Question 3

YOU MENTIONED JUNG'S IDEA THAT MEN NEED TWO TYPES OF WOMEN. HISTORICALLY, A LOT OF MEN SEEM TO FEEL THIS WAY, WHILE VERY FEW WOMEN SEEM TO NEED MORE THAN ONE MAN AT A TIME. CAN THERE BE SOMETHING TO THIS IDEA IN MALE PSYCHOLOGY? IF SO, WHY?



THE QUESTION IS FROM ANAND PREM. First thing: she says, "Historically, a lot of men seem to feel this way..." History is just bunk. And history is created by men; no woman has written history. It is male-oriented, it is male-dominated, it is male-managed. It is a false history.

Man has tried to condition woman in such a way that he can exploit her easily, and she cannot even rebel. Slaves always have to be hypnotized in such a way that they cannot rebel. Man has conditioned the woman's mind in such a way that she thinks the way man wants her to think.

You say: "Historically, a lot of men seem to feel this way..." because men are more free, they are the masters. Women have lived like slaves; they have accepted the slavery. You have to throw that slavery completely, you have to come out of it.

Just the other night I was reading that in the sixth century there was a great Christian conference of all the great Christian leaders to decide whether women have souls or not. Fortunately, they decided that women do have souls -- but only by ONE vote. It is not much of a victory. By the majority of one vote! -- just one vote less and historically you would not have any soul. It is not much, this soul.

Man has crushed the whole psychology of women. And whatsoever you see is not really the psychology of women -- it is man-made psychology, man-created psychology in women. The more free you will be, the more you will also feel the same way -- because men and women are not REALLY so different as they have been thought to be. They ARE different! Their biology is different, and, certainly, their psychology is different -- but they are not unequals. Their similarities are more than their dissimilarities.

Just think: a man eating the same thing every day gets fed up, and a woman? will she get fed up with it or not? She will also get fed up. What is the difference between the two? Boredom is as natural to man as to woman. And unless a sexual relationship evolves into a spiritual friendship, it is going to be boring.

Let it be very clear to you: a sexual relationship in itself cannot be a lasting affair, because as far as sex is concerned it is a momentary thing. Once you have made love to a woman, you are really finished with her, you are no more interested in her. Unless something more than a sexual relationship arises between you, something higher, some spiritual contact is made -- it can be made through sex, it SHOULD be made, otherwise sexual relationship is just physical -- if something spiritual, something like a spiritual marriage happens, THEN there will be no problem. Then you can stay together. And then, whether you are a man or a woman you will not think of other women or other men. It is finished -- you have found your soulmate.

But if the relationship is only physical, then the body gets tired, bored. The body needs a thrill, the body needs the new, the body needs sensation. The body is always hankering for something new.



An ATS driver, after a long journey across Salisbury Plain, arrived at her destination, a remote camp, at midnight. The Sergeant of the Guard showed her where to leave the lorry, and then said, "Where will you sleep tonight?"

The girl explained that the only thing she could do was to kip down in the cab. It was a cold night, and the Sergeant thought for a moment and said, "If you like you can have my bunk -- I'll sleep on the floor."

The offer was accepted with thanks. After the girl had turned in, she felt very sorry for the Sergeant Lying down there on the hard cold floor, and, leaning out, said, "This isn't right -- why don't you get up here and squeeze in alongside of me?"

This being done, the'sarge' said, "Well, how's it to be? Do you want to sleep single or married?"

The girl giggled and said, "I think it would be nice if we slept married, don't you?"

"Right, I'm not fussy, we'll sleep married then," he said turning his back on her and going off to sleep.



Marriage bores. That's why you see so many bored faces all around the world. Marriage is a tremendous boredom. Unless something spiritual happens in it... which is rare. So men start looking outside. Women will ALSO look outside, but they have not been free. That's why you find so many women prostitutes, but not so many male prostitutes. Yes, they exist in London I think, a few... but male prostitutes are just almost non-existent. Why?

Prostitution is a by-product of marriage, and unless marriage disappears, prostitution is going to remain -- it is a by-product. It will go only with marriage. Now, your so-called mahatmas have been trying to stop prostitution and these are the people who go on forcing marriage. And they don't see the absurdity of it! Prostitution exists BECAUSE of marriage. In animals there is no prostitution because there is no marriage. Have you ever found any animal prostituting itself? There is no problem! Why should prostitution exist at all?

That ugly thing exists because of one other ugly thing: marriage. But male prostitutes are not so many because women have not been free. They have been repressed completely. They have not been allowed to have their sexual joy even. They are not even supposed to have it -- only bad women are supposed to have sexual joy, not good women; not ladies, only women. Ladies are not supposed to have any joy -- they are far superior.

This is not real history. This is managed history this is arranged history. And if you go on for thousands of years enforcing some idea, it becomes almost real. It is not true psychology. To know the true psychology, you will have to give women total freedom -- and then see. And you will be surprised: they will be far ahead of men.

You can watch them: a man almost always goes on wearing the same grey dress -- women? every day they need a new sari. I watch their mind. If they are given total freedom, they will be far ahead of men! Men can go on; you can see -- their clothes are not very colorful. And something like fashion does not exist as far as man is concerned. What fashion? The same grey official suit, the same tie. They don't have much of a wardrobe -- but women? The whole market exists for them! They are the real consumers.

Man is the producer: woman is the consumer. Ninety percent of the things in the market exist for women. Why? They want new things more; they want new experiences, new thrills more. Maybe because their sexuality has been repressed it is a diversion of their energy -- because they cannot have a new husband, a new sari is a substitute; a new car is a substitute, a new house is a substitute. They put their energy somewhere else.... But this is not reality.

Women have been so much corrupted and destroyed that it is very difficult to decide what their real psychology is. Don't listen to history; history is an ugly record -- it is a record of long slavery. At least women should NOT listen to history; they should burn all history books! They should say that history has to be written again.

You will be surprised that when you impose a certain idea, the mind starts functioning that way. Mind starts imitating ideas. It has been a long hypnosis the woman has lived in.

But I am not saying that society should be just like animals. I am saying that sex should be a jumping-board. If your relationship is defined by sex only and it has nothing more in it, then marriage will create prostitution. But if your marriage is deeper than your body, then there is no need.

Each single human being, man or woman, is such an infinite space... you can go on exploring, go on exploring. There is no end to it. Each human being, man or woman, EACH day is so alive and so new -- new leaves coming up, new flowers blooming, a new climate, new moods -- if you love, if you are really intimate, you will never find the same old woman with you, and you will never find the same old man. Life is such a tremendous dynamism....

But you don't love! You are stuck with the body. You don't look in. You don't look at the inner sky which is constantly changing... what MORE change do you need? But you don't look at that. Of course, the body is the same. Then it loses excitement. When excitement is lost, your life becomes boring. When you become bored you start seeking help, because you are getting neurotic. Your life is a drag. You go to the psychoanalyst; in the past you used to go to the priest, now you go to the psychoanalyst -- you ask for help. Something is going wrong: you don't enjoy life, there is no delight. You start thinking of committing suicide. If you move with excitement, then you become criminals. If you stay with society, with the establishment, then you become bored. It is a great dilemma: you are not allowed to move anywhere! Between these two horns you are crushed and killed. Either live with the establishment, then you will live a bored life; or go anti-establishment, but then you look like a criminal, then you start feeling guilty.

Women have to come to absolute freedom. And with the freedom of women, man will also be free -- because you cannot be really free if you are keeping somebody as a slave. A master is a slave of the slave. Man is not really free, because he cannot be: HALF of humanity is forced to remain slaves -- how can man be free? His freedom is just so-so, just superficial. With the freedom of women, man will also be free.

And with freedom there is a possibility to enter into a deeper relationship -- and if that DOESN'T happen then there is no need to remain bored, then there is no need to remain clinging to each other.



A man who had felt unwell for some time went to his doctor and asked for a check-up. The doctor gave him a going over and said, "Either you pack up smoking, drinking and sex, or you'll be dead in twelve months."

After a while the man went back and said, "Look, I'm so bloody miserable I might just as well be dead -- PLEASE can I smoke just a little?"

"Very well, just five filter-tips a day," said the medico, who was a very abrupt man.

Some weeks later the man was back again: "Look here, I do miss my pint, please....?'

"Alright, two halves a day then, and no spirits."

Time went by, and the patient approached the doctor for the third time... seeing the man, the doctor said, "Yes, yes, but only with your wife -- no excitement!"



Life needs excitement. If you cannot allow it to have spiritual excitement, it will need physical excitement. Give it a higher excitement and the lower excitements disappear; they are not needed. Don't give it a higher excitement and the lower is the only available excitement.

Man has tried to keep himself open. Jung is tricky, and what Jung is saying is the old crap. This has always been said by man, that a man needs two women at least: one, the mother type, the wife type; another, the mistress, the inspiration. If man needs two women, then women also need two men: the father type and the Don Juan.

But what I am trying to say is that even in the twentieth century men like Freud and Jung are still as male chauvinistic as ever -- not much difference. Women have to think for themselves; men cannot be of much help. They have to come to their own understanding -- and NOW there is an opportunity for them to come to their own understanding.



BUT ANAND PREM'S QUESTION is not basically about women: it is about her own mind. She is a clinging type, and that clinging is also because of the historical conditioning. The woman clings too much because she is afraid about insecurity, about safety, about finance, about this and that. She is so much afraid. She has been made afraid! That is the trick of the man, to make the woman afraid. When the woman is afraid she can be easily dominated. You cannot dominate somebody who is not afraid. So create fear!

First man creates fear in women about their virginity -- he creates great fear that virginity is something very valuable. Down the centuries he has created that fear, so every girl is afraid: if she loses her virginity, all is lost. Through that fear she cannot relate to people, she cannot make friendships, she cannot move in freedom. She cannot have a few experiences before she decides whom to choose. The fear... she has to be virgin.

Look at the distinction: they have not told the boys that "you have to be virgin" -- they say "boys are boys." And girls are not girls? Girls are girls too! Why are boys boys? Virginity is not asked from the boys. They are given freedom.

Through virginity, a great conditioning. And once a woman becomes too much afraid of losing her virginity -- think: up to the twentieth year of age, twenty years she has been protecting her virginity, twenty years of conditioning -- she will become frigid. Then she will never enjoy! Then she will never be able to flow in love; she will never have any orgasm. Down the centuries, millions of women have not had any orgasm they don't know what orgasm is. They simply suffer. They are simply means for the man. This a great degradation.

But if virginity is too important, and there is twenty years of conditioning that one has to be a virgin and always on guard, then it will be very difficult to drop that habit. How can you suddenly drop it after twenty years of conditioning? Just one day the honeymoon comes and you have to drop it -- how can you drop it? You can only pretend -- but deep down you think your husband a criminal, a beast, an ugly man, because he is doing something which you know is a sin. You never allowed any other man -- love is sin, and this man is doing that!

No wife is ever capable of forgiving the husband. In fact, in India particularly, no woman respects the husband, cannot. Shows all respect, but CANNOT respect -- deep down she hates the man because this is the man who is dragging her into sin. How can you respect the husband when he is the sinner? Without him you were a virgin; with him you have fallen. That's why the society teaches too much: Respect the husband! because the society knows, naturally the woman will not be able to respect him, so respect has to be forced... Respect the husband! Because if things go naturally, then she will HATE this man. This is the man who is preparing hell for her.

And out of this sin are born children -- how can you love your children? Born out of sin, you will hate them too, deep down in the unconscious. The very presence of the children will remind you again and again of the sin that you have committed!

The whole society has suffered because of this foolishness. Love is virtue, not sin. And to be capable of more love, is to be more virtuous. To be capable of enjoying love is a basic quality of a religious man -- these are my definitions.

Anand Prem is a great clinger -- and she thinks that whatsoever is true about her is true about all women? In a way she is right, because all other women have been conditioned in the same way. But it is not truth -- neither about other women nor about you, Anand Prem, it is not truth.

Become capable of being individuals, then you will have some taste of freedom. A woman is never thought of as an individual. When she is small, she is a daughter. When she is young, she is a wife. When she becomes a little older, she is a mother; still older, she is a grandmother -- but she is never herself. Sometimes a daughter, sometimes a wife, sometimes a mother, sometimes a grandmother -- but NEVER herself. Always in relation to somebody else!

Individuality is needed as a basic requirement. A woman is a woman! her being a daughter is secondary; her being a wife is secondary; her being a mother is secondary. A woman is a woman -- her womanhood is primary. And when women start becoming individuals, there will be a totally different world -- more beautiful, more joyous.

Now there is boredom and jealousy, nothing else. You are bored with the woman, the woman is bored with you. You are jealous, she is jealous. Why does this jealousy come as a shadow of boredom? Boredom brings it. Too many people come to me and they want not to be jealous, but they don't understand why jealousy comes, they don't understand the mechanism of it.

Listen: when you are bored with a woman, you know deep down that she must be bored with you too. That's natural! If she is bored with you, then she must be looking for some other man somewhere -- the milkman, the postman, the driver -- whosoever is available, she must be looking somewhere. You know when you are bored, you start looking at other women. So you know! this is a natural inference. Jealousy arises. So you become jealous -- she must be looking. Then you start finding ways to see whether she is looking or not. And, naturally, how can she avoid looking? There are so many men -- and she is bored with you. It is her life; her whole life is at stake.

The woman is jealous; she knows that the husband is bored. Now he is not so delighted as he used to be; now he does not come running home with joy; now he simply tolerates her. In fact, he is more interested in his newspaper than he is interested in her. He immediately gets irritated; small things and he becomes very, very angry and rough. All that softness, that honeymoon softness is gone. She knows he is bored. He is no more interested in her.

Then suddenly, certainly she knows, her instinct knows, he must be becoming interested somewhere else -- jealousy. Then if some day he comes home happy, she is worried: he must have been with some woman, otherwise why is he looking so happy? If he goes for a holiday, or if he goes for some business trip, she is worried. If he starts going too much on business trips, it becomes more certain... jealousy poisons the relationship.

But it is part of boredom! If you are not bored with the person, you will not be jealous because you will not have that idea in your mind. It is not, in fact, because of the OTHER'S interest in the other: it is because of YOUR interest in the other that you become jealous, that jealousy arises.

Of course, women are more jealous because they are less free. Their boredom is more fixed. They know the man goes out; he has more possibilities, opportunities. They are encaged in the home, imprisoned in the home with the kids; it is difficult for them to have so much freedom. They feel jealous. The more they feel jealous, the more they cling. Fear arises. If the man leaves them, what will happen? A slave becomes MORE attached to his safety than to his freedom. A slave becomes MORE attached to his security than to his freedom. That's what has happened. It has nothing to do with feminine psychology, Prem. Yes, I understand: it has happened to woman; it is an ugly phenomenon. It has to be dropped. It should not be so in the future if men and women become a little more aware. And BOTH are living in hell!



The Squire and his Lady were Chief Patrons of the Agricultural Show, and after the opening ceremony they dutifully walked round, mixing with the tenants and peasantry, and looking at the exhibits.

But his Lordship spent so much time in the beer tent that her Ladyship wandered off to admire the prize bull. Never was a male animal so splendidly equipped.

"My, but that's a fine beast you have there, Giles," she said to the yokel in charge.

"Yes, my Lady, he be champion, and father o'champions."

"Go on, tell me about him."

"Well, M'am, this here bull went to stud three hundred times last year."

"Indeed? Well, go over to his Lordship will you, my good fellow, and tell him there's a bull here went to stud three hundred times in one year, will you."

Giles dutifully trotted up to Squire and gave the message....

"Very interesting indeed," was his comment, "always the same cow, I presume?"

"Oh, no indeed, Sir, three hundred different cows."

"Aha, go and tell her Ladyship that, will you."



Animals are so happy... because they don't have any institution to live in. And, mind you, I am not against marriage: I am for a higher marriage. I am against THIS marriage because this marriage has created prostitution. I am for a higher marriage.

If you can find the intimacy, spiritual intimacy with a man or woman, then there will be a NATURAL togetherness no law is needed to enforce it. Then there will be a spontaneous joy in being together. Till it lasts, good; when it disappears, there is no point in being together -- no point at all! Then you are crushing each other, killing each other; then you are either a masochist or a sadist -- you are neurotic.

If MY idea some day prevails -- which seems very difficult, because man has become so accustomed to dead roles that he has forgotten how to live -- if some day LIFE prevails and man becomes courageous enough to live dangerously, then there will be real marriages, then you will find many soulmates together. There will be no prostitution.

Of course, the larger part of humanity will go on changing partners, but nothing is wrong in it. The only problem that arises again and again in the minds of men and women is: What about kids? That is not a big problem. My conception is that of commune, not of a family. Families have to disappear -- communes should exist.

For example, this is a commune. Kids should belong to the commune, and the commune should take care of the kids. The mother should be known, who the mother is, but the father should not be known -- there is no need. That was the original state of humanity: matriarchal. Then society became patriarchal: father became important. And with the father came a thousand and one illnesses. The greatest illness has been private property; it came with father. And the society will suffer from private property until father disappears.

A commune -- where kids belong to the commune, when the commune can take care of them. The mother will look after them, but the mother can trust one thing: that she can move from one man to another -- there is no problem in it. The kids should be taken care of; even if she dies, the commune is there.

And, when the property belongs to the commune and not to any individual, there will be real communism. Even in Soviet Russia, real communism does not exist. It cannot exist with the father; it is impossible. Private property came with the family, with the nuclear family -- father, mother, kids -- then private property came. Private property can go only when this nuclear family disappears and a totally new concept of commune arrives. It is possible now. The world has come to that state of consciousness where communes can exist, and THROUGH communes, communism -- not otherwise. Not that communism comes first -- it is not possible. If communism comes first, it will bring only dictatorship, it will bring only an ugly society as it has happened in Soviet Russia or is happening in China.

First,.let there be communal life as far as sex is concerned, then property will disappear. Property is part of sexual possession. When you possess a woman, you possess property; when you possess a man, you possess property -- you have to possess property. When you don't possess any human being, who bothers to possess property? Then property is to be used; there is no need to possess. And it is easier to use it without possessing it, because people who possess cannot use it -- they are always afraid, they are miserly. Property can be used more freely.

But first the family has to disappear.

I am not saying that all families will disappear. Only spiritual families will remain; non-spiritual families will disappear. But it is good, because those people who are not spiritual enough, why should they be forced to remain bored? Why should they be forced to remain in a relationship which does not lead to any joy? Why? This is criminal.



The fourth question:

Question 4

I USED TO THINK THAT I AM PRETTY AWARE, PRETTY SURRENDERED. THAT IMAGE STILL CROSSES MY MIND, BUT I DON'T REALLY BELIEVE IN IT. AND ALL THIS MAKES ME WONDER THAT MAYBE ALL YOUR TALK OF AWARENESS AND SURRENDER IS JUST TO DRIVE US CRAZY LIKE A CARROT IN FRONT OF A DONKEY, AND THAT NONE OF IT REALLY EXISTS -- AND THAT MAKES ME FEEL ANGRY, STUPID AND INDIFFERENT ALL AT ONCE.



THE CARROT EXISTS... AND THE DONKEY DOES NOT. Now it is up to you to choose: you can be a donkey, then the carrot does not exist. If you look at the carrot, the carrot exists and the donkey disappears. Naturally, if you think the carrot does not exist, you will feel angry, stupid and indifferent, because you will be the donkey. Rather than thinking that the carrot does not exist, why don't you look inside yourself -- do you exist?

My whole emphasis is: Enlightenment exists -- you don't exist! Awareness exists -- ego does not exist: that is my whole emphasis.

But still, the choice is yours; it is up to you. If you want to choose misery, then misery is possible only with the ego -- then you have to choose the ego, then you have to choose the donkey. Then you have to go on believing that the carrot does not exist. BUT IT EXISTS! And once you start feeling the carrot, you will start seeing that the donkey is disappearing: it was just an idea. With the carrot there is bliss. With the ego there is only hell. Choose whatsoever you want to choose....



The fifth question:

Question 5

BEFORE I MET YOU, I WAS MISERABLE AND TOTALLY UNAWARE. NOW, I AM MISERABLE WITH SOME DEGREE OF AWARENESS. WHAT'S NEW?



CAN'T YOU SEE IT?'THAT SOME DEGREE OF AWARENESS'-do you think it is valueless? That is the first ray... and the sun is not far away. If you catch hold of the ray, if you move in the direction the ray is coming from, you will reach to the very source of light.

If even ONE ray exists in darkness, it is enough proof of light, of God. Don't call it 'some degree of awareness'.

But I understand. We have lived unaware so long, we have lived unconsciously so long, we have lived like machines so long, that even when a little awareness comes, our old habits are so heavy, so big....



There was once a young woman joined the ATS and went for her medical. The doctor had her stripped off, and then called over his assistant. "Look at that: the biggest navel I've ever seen in all my career!"

The young doctor looked and said, "By George, girl, that's a huge navel can I take a photograph of it for the medical press?"

The girl was fed up and could not understand what all this was in aid of. "You'd have a big navel if you'd been in the Salvation Army for as many years as I have."

This only heightened the mystery. "The Salvation Army? -- what's that got to do with it?"

"I carried the banner for ten years!"



And you have been carrying the banner for millions of lives -- so the navel has become very big. The unconsciousness is all your biography; all that you know about yourself is nothing but unconsciousness. So even when a ray of light enters, first you cannot trust it. Maybe you are looking at a dream? illusion? projection? Maybe there is some trick in it! Even if you trust it, it looks so small against your great past that you cannot trust that it is going to help in any way.

But let me tell you one thing: a small candle is more powerful than ALL the darkness upon all the planets. Darkness has no power; darkness is impotent. A small candle is potential -- BECAUSE IT IS! Darkness is just an absence.



A man came to the surgery covered with blood and bruises. "What is the matter?" said the doctor.

"It's my wife -- another of her nightmares."

"Don't talk daft man! She might have kicked you, but not these injuries."

"Listen doc, she had one of her nightmares: she shouted out,'Get out, quick -- my husband is coming home!' And me being only half awake, naturally, I jumped straight out of the window."



It is a long, old habit of being unconscious. But look at that 'some degree of awareness', focus yourself on it -- that is your hope. Through that small ray opens the door. Can't you see it? You ask me: "What is new?"



The sixth question:

Question 6

I AM A CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN. I LOVE YOUR TALKS, BUT WHEN YOU SAY SOMETHING WHICH GOES AGAINST MY RELIGION THEN I AM TERRIBLY UPSET. WHAT SHOULD I DO?



THERE ARE THREE THINGS: first, only listen to that which suits you; don't listen to that which goes against you. That's what many are doing, otherwise it is going to be a rough journey. But when you are here listening, it is difficult -- how to avoid that? In fact, before you know it is against you, you have listened to it.

Then you need to do something which professors know how to do, pundits, scholars know how to do. When you listen to something which goes against you, first: think that it is trivial; it does not matter; it is not very relevant; it does not change your mind. It is a small thing! Maybe a little difference in the details, but basically Osho agrees with you. Keep that in the mind.

It happened:



A woman went to the doctor and complained she could not get passionate. The doctor examined her, and told her that if she would follow his special diet she would get very randy. This was agreed, but after a few weeks she was back and said, "There's something gone wrong! Last night I got so passionate I chewed my boyfriend's ear off."

"Oh, don't worry about that trifle," said the doctor, "it's only protein -- no carbohydrates."



This is the first way: that only in small details... it is nothing very important. You need not worry. That will help you and you will not get so upset.

The second thing is: interpret it -- mm? -- that's what Saraha goes on saying: Be interpretative! Interpret it in such a way that it comes closer to your idea. That can always be done; a little skill is need. A little logic, a little play with words that's all. It is not much of a problem; you can manage it. If you have really been a Catholic it will not be difficult at all.

Listen to this:



The Irish navvies were digging the road outside a house full of made-up floozies. A parson came along, pulled down his hat and went in. Says Pat to Mike, "Did you see that! Just what you'd expect with one of them parsons!"

Soon after, a rabbi arrived, turned up his collar, and in he went. Says Mike to Pat, "Is it not a terrible thing that the priest of God's Own People should go in there!"

Lastly a Catholic priest arrived, wrapped his cloak round his head, and dived quickly into the bawdy house.

"Pat, isn't that dreadful now, to think that one of the girls must have been taken ill."



This is an interpretation. When the rabbi goes, it is something else; when the priest goes, it is something else; when the Catholic priest arrives... you can change the interpretation. There is no problem in it: now some girl seems to be ill.

This is the second way to avoid me.

And the third way is: think that this guy here is mad. That is the surest of all -- if nothing else works, that works. Just think that this man is mad! Only a madman can say things against Catholicism. That will help you, and will not upset you at all.



The newly appointed priest thought he'd walk this vast parish and meet the flock. One day he followed a dusty track for miles to find a devout family with fourteen children.

"Good day, Connelly, you're a credit to Ireland -- the biggest family in the parish."

"Good day, father, but this is not the biggest family in the parish -- that's Doylan, over the hill."

It was a tired priest who greeted Doylan and his sixteen children... but "God bless all these eighteen little Catholics," he said.

"Sorry father, but this is a Protestant family!"

"Then I'll go at once," said the priest, "for it's nothing but a dirty sex maniac that ye are!"



If I go with you, "this man is great"; if I don't go with you think''this man is mad" -- that will help you.

These are the tricks others are playing and not getting upset. Now you know the secrets... you can do that too.

But if your whole effort is not to get upset, then why are you here? My whole effort here is to make you as much upset as possible. Then why go with me at all? Unless I upset you, I cannot transform you. Unless I destroy you, I cannot create you. Unless I am very drastic, there is no way, no hope for you.

It is my compassion that I go on hammering on your head -- because that is the only way! And I have to hammer too much: what can I do? -- you have such thick heads. Something upsets you because something true comes into your vision; otherwise it will not upset you.

Always remember: anything upsetting you is valuable... think over it, meditate over it. Allow it to have its whole say. Contemplate over it. Let it be there present in your being long so that you can look at it from all the angles possible -- because something upsetting simply means that something has made you aware that whatsoever you have been believing up to now is just a lie. Only truth upsets. Only truth destroys because only truth can create.

I am a chaos... and if you are really going to be with me, you have to pass through chaos. That's what Saraha says, that's what Tantra is all about -- destructuring, taking your character away, taking your ideology away, TAKING YOUR MIND AWAY! It is surgical.

I am helpless. I have to do it. And I know it is a very thankless job.



The last question:

Question 7

WHAT IS SAMSARA?



The samsara is this story:



The London fog was swirling over the Thames as a young tramp settled himself on the embankment for the night. Suddenly he was roused by a gentle voice and looking up saw a beautiful brunette alighting from her chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce.

"My poor man," she said, "you must be terribly cold and wet. Let me drive you to my home and put you up for the night."

Of course, the tramp didn't refuse this invitation and climbed into the car beside her. After a short drive the car stopped before a large Victorian mansion and the brunette stepped out, beckoning the tramp to follow her. The door was opened by the butler, into whose charge the lady gave the tramp, with instructions that he should be given a meal, a bath and a comfortable bed in the servants' quarters.

Some while later, as the brunette was preparing to retire, it occurred to her that her guest might be in need of something, so, slipping on her negligee, she hurried along to the servants' wing. As she rounded the corner a chink of light met her eye, indicating that the young man was awake. Knocking softly on the door she entered the room and inquired of the young man why he was not sleeping.

"Surely you are not hungry?"

"Oh no, your butler fed me royally."

"Then perhaps your bed is not comfortable?"

"But it is -- soft and warm."

"Then you must need company. Move over a little...."




By OSHO...The Tantra Vision Volume 1.