Question – Osho, To find a soulmate sounds nice, but almost impossible. Would you please say something more about it? And how can it even come close to finding a Master?

Osho – Prem Aniruddha, IT IS CERTAINLY ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to find the soulmate — even if ALL facilities are available. The earth is big, millions and millions of people; and life is very short — how are you going to find your soulmate? And remember, even if all the facilities are available… right now, no facilities are available. It becomes even more impossible when facilities are not available, when you are prevented in every way from finding the soulmate. But even if you are helped, educated in how to find the soulmate, then too it will be difficult to find them in a small seventy years’ life. It rarely happens; it is a rare phenomenon.

Man has seven centers. The lowest is the sex center and the highest is the samadhi center, and between these two there are five more centers. It is a ladder. When all the seven centers of a man are in tune and harmony with all the seven centers of a woman, then you have found the soulmate. It has happened only once in a while — with Krishna and Radha, with Shiva and Shakti. It could have also happened to Majnu and Laila if they had been allowed to meet, to Shiri and Farihad if they had been allowed to meet — but the society hindered them.

And remember: Krishna and Radha were not allowed by the society either; it was not a legal marriage, it was illegal. Radha was not Krishna’s wife but just a girlfriend. And with Shiva and Shakti, the parents were very much against Shakti getting married to Shiva. He looked a very strange man — he was. It was against the parental advice that Shakti jumped into a love affair with Shiva.

But only once in a while has this happened, and this seems to be natural. Whenever it happens, absolute oneness is felt — unity, not union. Two persons utterly disappear into each other; there is not even a small, thin screen dividing them; there is no division at all. It is UNIO MYSTICA. Two persons function as if they are one person; two bodies, but one soul. It is absolute harmony. It is love at its peak. No meditation is needed — this love is enoughs.

You must have seen Shiva temples in India; you must have seen the SHIVALINGA. SHIVALINGA simply represents the orgasmic state of these two lovers. SHIVALINGA simply represents Shiva as masculine energy; and just below SHIVALINGA — the phallic symbol — is the symbol of Shakti: YONI. SHIVALINGA and Shakti’s YONI are meeting; they have become one, they have disappeared into each other. They have lost ALL personality. That’s why it is the only image in the world which has no face.

Just pure energy is symbolized by LINGA and YONI, by the male sexual organ and the female sexual organ. Simply energy is represented — creative energy, vital energy; energy out of which the whole of life flows. Neither does Shakti have any face nor does Shiva have any face; those faces are no more meaningful, the personalities have disappeared. It is a meeting of pure energy, and only pure energies can dissolve into each other — because if you have a solid personality it will obstruct dissolution. Only pure energies, liquid, can enter into each other and become one. If you put two rocks together, they may be together but they cannot become one. But if you pour water into water, it becomes one.

At this highest peak where all the seven centers meet, persons disappear, only energies remain, a play of energy, a play of consciousness. And the joy is constant, it is orgasmic. It is a spiritual communion. No meditation is needed for such a couple — because for such a couple love is meditation enough. It is a mystic phenomenon, it is transcendental. But it is very rare. Amongst millions and millions of people, once it will happen. It will be almost a chance meeting.

Below it, there is another meeting: six centers meeting. That too is rare. If the first is one percent, the second is only two percent. It is union, not unity. It is not a cosmic, mystical union, but still something very close to it — an aesthetic union, an artistic phenomenon, a poetic experience.

The first can be understood only by those who have known samadhi, satori. The second can be understood by poets, painters, dancers, musicians. The third, lower than that, is the meeting of five centers. It is three percent possible. It is not even a union; it is duality. Two persons remain two, but still there is great harmony. The two function in harmony — as if two musical instruments are playing in harmony. The two remain two. There is no union, there is no unity. They are separate.

This is what Kahlil Gibran has described: “Lovers should be like two pillars of a temple supporting the same roof, yet apart and separate.” This is a little lower than the aesthetic, artistic, musical experience. It is a moral experience — chaste, still beautiful.

The fourth is four centers meeting. It has a four percent possibility. Duality. Harmony has disappeared but there is great understanding still — great understanding about each other, great caring about each other. There is no spontaneous harmony, but out of understanding a certain rhythm is maintained. It is an experience of great intelligence; it is not even moral. One has to be aware — if one is not aware, one will fall from this fourth state. Then there is the fifth: three centers meeting. Five percent possibility. Duality becomes more and more emphasized.

Understanding is still there but not constant — flickering, shaky. Once in a while conflict arises, but it is not disruptive of love. On the contrary, it adds to it, makes it a little more spicy. It is a psychological experience.
Below it is two centers meeting — Six percent possibility. Great duality, clearcut duality. Moments, only moments, of understanding. And conflict comes too much. It is almost fifty-fifty: fifty percent understanding, fifty percent conflict. It is a physiological experience. Still a great balance is there because of this fifty percent understanding, fifty percent conflict.

And below it is one center meeting — seven percent possibility. Too much conflict. Rare moments of joy, very rare. Once in a while, few and far between. But still worth it! It is a sexual experience. And below it, the lowest, is no centers meeting — the common, garden variety. These are the couples you meet. It is not even a sexual experience; it is even below sexual experience. It is more or less masturbatory. It is only a certain kind of social, economic, political arrangement. It is exploitation. It is businesslike. It is more or less part of the marketplace, the arranged marriage.

No love. No respect. Not even hate! Because hate can exist only if some love is there. It is neither friendship nor enmity. It is a very formal relationship — a relationship which is not a relationship at all. It is a mutual masturbatory arrangement. You exploit the other, the other exploits you. It is a kind of prostitution. The ugliest possibility… but this is what is happening on the earth.

One Friday afternoon, Harold’s boss told him that he would have to work overtime that day. That was okay with Harold except that he had no way of letting his wife know he would be late coming home, since they had just moved into a new little house in the suburbs and did not have a phone yet.

“Since I am passing that way, I will tell her,” the boss volunteered.
A few hours later, the boss arrived at the cottage and rang the doorbell. Harold’s wife came to the door wearing a see-through wraparound. The boss could not take his eyes off her body.
“Yes?” she said.

“I am Harold’s boss,” Harold’s boss said. “He is working overtime and asked me to tell you he will be home late.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“How about going upstairs for some love-making?”
Harold’s wife felt her cheeks flush to an angry red. “How dare you!”
The boss shrugged. “Supposing I give you fifty dollars?”
“Absolutely not! Why, I never heard such nerve…”
“One hundred dollars?”
“Uh… no.”
“One hundred and fifty?”
“I don’t think that would be right, do you?”

At this point the boss purred, “Listen, honey, Harold isn’t gonna know. It is an easy way to make a hundred and fifty bucks, and we will just spend a little time together.”
She nodded, took him by the hand, and led him upstairs to the bed where they had fun and games for an hour. That night, when Harold came home, he asked, “Did the boss come by to tell you I would be late?”
“Yes, Harold,” the sweet thing said. “He did stop by for a few seconds.”
“Good,” said Harold. “Then he gave you my salary?”

This is a very businesslike world, very cunning. And all your arrangements that you call relationships, that you call love affairs, have nothing to do with relationship or with love affair. They are basically economic arrangements.

There once was a Scotsman called Dave
Who kept a dead whore in a cave.
He said, “I admit
I’m a bit of a shit
But think of the money I save.”

And you will find these Scotsmen everywhere! The whole world is really a Scotland.

Aniruddha, you ask: TO FIND A SOULMATE SOUNDS NICE, BUT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE.
YES IT IS ALMOST lMPOSSIBLE — if left to nature itself, it is almost impossible. But in the East we have developed a science: if you cannot find a soulmate, you can create one. And that science is Tantra. To find a soulmate means to find the person with whom all your seven centers meet naturally. That is impossible. Once in a while, a Krishna and a Radha, a Shiva and a Shakti. And when it happens, it is tremendously beautiful. But it is like lightning — you cannot depend on it. If you want to read your Bible, you can’t depend on it that when the lightning is there you will read. The lightning is a natural phenomenon, but undependable.

If you wait for your natural soulmate to meet with you, it will be just like waiting for lightning to read your Bible. And you will not be able to read much either. For a moment it is there, and by the time you have opened the Bible it is gone.

Hence Tantra was created. Tantra is a scientific approach. Tantra is alchemy: it can transform your centers, it can transform the other’s centers; it can create a rhythm and harmony between you and your beloved. That is the beauty of Tantra. It is like bringing electricity into your house. Then you can turn it on and off whenever you want. And you can have a thousand and one uses of it: it can cool your room, it can heat your room…. Then it is a miracle. These seven centers in you are nothing but centers of body electricity. So when I am talking about lightning, don’t think of it only as a symbol — I mean it literally.

In your body there exists a subtle current of electricity, very subtle. But the more subtle it is, the deeper it goes. It is not very visible. Scientists say that all the electricity that is in your body, if put together, can be used to light a five-candle bulb. It is not much. Quantitatively it is not much; quantitatively the atom is not much, but qualitatively… if it explodes, it has tremendous energy in it.

These seven centers, these seven chakras, Yoga and Tantra have talked about down the ages, are nothing but five knots in your body electric current. They can be changed, they can be rearranged. They can be given a new shape, form. Two lovers can be transformed so deeply that all their seven centers can start meeting.

Tantra is the science of transforming ordinary lovers into soulmates. And that is the grandeur of Tantra. It can transform the whole earth; it can transform each couple into soul-mates. It has not yet been used; it is one of the greatest treasures that is Lying there, unused. The day humanity uses it, a new love will surround the earth; the earth will become aglow with a new love. Only the new man can use it — Homo NOVUS CAN use it.

That’s why I herald the new man. Only the new man can use it because only the new man will accept his body in its totality. The old man NEVER accepted his body. He was always fighting with his body, quarrelling with his body, trying to destroy his body. The old man was suicidal; the old man was schizophrenic.

The new man will have a wholeness to him. He will not be suicidal. He will be so tremendously in love with life that he will want to come back again and again and again. Only the new man can transform these life energy centers.
That’s what I am trying to do here. It is offending the whole country — not only the whole country but the whole world, because they have never heard of anything like this. This is a great experiment. On the success of this experiment much will depend.

If we can help people to grow into such depths of love that EACH couple becomes a Krishna-Radha, that each couple becomes a Shiva and Shakti, just think of the world, how beautiful it can become. The paradise will become pale before it. This very earth can be the paradise.

But the science is subtle, and only those who are really ready to understand without prejudices can understand it. And the work is very delicate, mysterious. Outsiders will never be able to understand what is going on; they are bound to misunderstand it.

It is just the same: if you take outsiders to some scientific lab where they are researching atomic energy, do you think the outsiders will be able to understand anything at all? This is afar deeper experiment! because to work on atomic energy is to work on matter, and to work on human energy, love energy, is to work on consciousness. It needs very perceptive people to see it.

But this is what my intention is in creating a commune, a Buddhafield — where I can transform each couple into Krishna-Radha, where each couple can have that joy, that cosmic joy, that cosmic orgasm, that total ecstasy, when all the seven centers of man and woman meet and mingle and disappear into each other. Right now you are at the lowest where not even a single center is meeting.

Aniruddha, it is impossible if you depend on nature. It is very very possible if you depend on Tantra.

Source – Osho Book “Philosophia Perennis, Vol1″

(Osho hands Tantra Mridani her sannyas name with the comments)

Osho – You have a simply far-out name. (laughter) This is your name: Ma Tantra Mridani. Mridani means erotic partner of the cosmic lover (much laughter). Is it not nice?

But you can only become a partner of the cosmic lover through tantra, there is no other way. Tantra is the only method. Tantra means the science of falling in love with existence, not with any individual in particular; falling in love without any address of any lover, falling in love with the whole, the unaddressed whole, the unnamable whole. It contains everything from the rocks to the stars. And certainly one can have a communion with the whole, far more deeper than can exist between two individuals.

Two individuals can come to a union only for a moment — it is temporary, fleeting dreamlike. For one moment it is there and then it is gone. In fact before you have recognised that it is there it is no more there, Hence ordinary love brings both — the ecstasy which is momentary, and after the ecstasy, the dark night, the despair, the agony. Both these experiences are so mixed, so deeply mixed, that people hare chosen either one or the other. Those who have chosen the first, the ecstasy part, they believe in love; and those who have chosen the other part, the agony part, they emphasise renunciation of the world. But both have come out of the experience of love. They are like two sides of the same coin.

You can choose one side, the other side will be hidden beneath it; you cannot discard it. So those who live in the world are always attracted by the monks living in the monasteries, in the caves. Those who are worldly are always respectful of the other — worldly. The worldly people in a thousand and one ways are fascinated by the spiritual people. In fact only the worldly are infatuated with the spiritual people, and this you can see everywhere — for example, in India. The country is very materialistic, the people are very worldly, clinging to small things but their respect always goes to the saints, to those who have renounced everything.

It looks a contradiction but it is only apparently a contradiction. Deep down it has significances the worldly person knows the momentary joy of love and then he knows the long despair that follows so he understands when the spiritual, the so-called spiritual condemns love, condemns sex, condemns the world. He understands perfectly well that he is right — it is his own experience too.

For centuries all over the world people have been making love in the night before they go to sleep, for the simple reason to avoid the darker part. So you reach sexual orgasm, you enjoy it for a moment, and then you fall asleep. This is a trick, a strategy, to avoid the other side of the coin. because it hurts. Reaching to such a peak and then falling to such a depth. reaching to a sunlit peak and then falling into a dark valley hurts very much. It is better to fall asleep.

For millions of people sex is nothing but a kind of tranquilliser. It relaxes them into a good sleep. But even if one falls into sleep one cannot absolutely avoid the despair — it lingers, it is there. And you cannot fall asleep immediately either. Even if you are awake for a few minutes you know that you had come to a height and now it is no more there; and again there is the longing for it It becomes a vicious circle; again and again you reach the peak, again and again you fall back.

So when the spiritual, the so-called spiritual — the saints, the priests, the life-condemners, the life-poisoners — condemn your life, your ways of life, your love affairs, deep down you agree, you know they are right. And on the other side they — the saints, the monks, the nuns — also feel that perhaps they are missing, perhaps the worldly people are enjoying themselves. Hence their attack on world; their condemnation becomes more sharpened. That is a revenge, because they are missing even those moments.

By missing those moments of course you will not feel your agony so much because there will be no contrast, but the agony is there. Even if the contrast is not there, how can you feel that you are on the peak? — you are in the dark valley. It is more comfortable in a way because you move on the same plane. The worldly person goes up and down, up and down again and again; his life is a little chaotic. The monk’s life in the monastery moves in a very smooth pattern — smooth, certainly, but without any joy. Even those small moments of ecstasy are missing. So he is angry — angry with all those people who are enjoying themselves. His anger comes out in condemnation.

Tantra is the only science ever developed which can give you an ecstasy which is not temporal, which can give you an ecstasy, an orgasmic joy, which remains for twenty-four hours a day, which becomes just like breathing or the heartbeat: it is simply there.

If people can live for twenty-four hours a day in despair, why can’t they live for twenty-four hour, a day in ecstasy? There is no reason. If despair is possible for twenty-four hours a day then ecstasy too is possible. But then one has to learn the secrets of tantra.

The fundamental secret is: whenever you are making love to anybody, remember, the person is only a window. Don’t become too interested in the frame of the window; the person is only a window — you are making love to the universe! So don’t become attached to the window. There are others windows, there are other doors, and if one is courageous enough there is no need for windows and door, one can come out in the open — -the whole sky is available! (laughter) That’s exactly the meaning of your name, making love to the stars and the sky and the clouds.

It will be a little crazy but it will bring immense bliss, making love to the earth, to the grass, to the trees, just being in love with everything that exists. That is becoming a partner, an erotic partner of the cosmic lover.

Slowly slowly one dissolves into the cosmos. The secret should be remembered: never become attached to individuals; they are only small windows into the universal. Remember the universal. Thank the individual but remember the universal. Be grateful to the individual but don’t become attached, don’t become possessive and don’t be possessed.
If one can avoid being possessed and being possessive then doors upon doors go on opening and one day all the walls disappear. You are suddenly under the sky. The whole existence becomes your love affair.

Source – Osho Book “Going All the Way”

Osho – Identification is the root and everything else is nothing but leaves. Being identified with greed, being identified with anger, being identified with sex, is the root. And remember, it is the same whether you are identified with greed, or sex, or even meditation. Love, MOKSHA, God – it makes no difference, it is the same identification. Being identified is the root, and all else is just like leaves. Don’t cut the leaves, leave them, nothing is wrong in them.

That’s why tantra does not believe in improving your character. It may give you a good shape – if you prune a tree you can make any shape out of it – but the tree remains the same. Character is just an outer shape – but you remain the same, no transmutation happens. Tantra goes deeper and says, ”Cut the root!” That’s why tantra was misunderstood too much, because tantra says, ”If you are greedy, be greedy; don’t bother about greed. If you are sexual, be sexual; don’t bother about it at all.”

The society cannot tolerate such a teaching: ”What are these people saying? They will create chaos. They will destroy the whole order.” But they have not understood that only tantra changes the society, the man, the mind, nothing else; and only tantra brings a real order, a natural order, a natural flowering of the inner discipline, nothing else. But it is a very deep process – you have to cut the root.

Watch greed, watch sex, watch anger, possessiveness, jealousy. One thing has to be remembered: you don’t get identified, you simply watch; you simply look, you become a spectator. By and by, the quality of witnessing grows; you become able to see all the nuances of greed. It is very subtle. You become capable of seeing how subtly the ego functions, how subtle are its ways. It is not a gross thing; it is very subtle and delicate and deep-hidden.

The more you watch, the more your eyes become capable of seeing, become more perceptive, the more you see and deeper you can move, and the more distance is created between you and whatsoever you do. Distance helps because without distance there can be no perception. How can you see a thing which is too close? If you are standing too close to a mirror, you cannot see your reflection. If your eyes are touching the mirror, how can you see? A distance is needed – and nothing can give you a distance except witnessing. You try it and see.

Move into sex; nothing is wrong in it, but remain a watcher. Watch all the movements of the body; watch the energy flowing in and out, watch how the energy is falling downwards; watch the orgasm, what is happening – how two bodies move in a rhythm. Watch the heartbeat – faster and faster it goes, a moment comes when it is almost mad. Watch the warmth of the body; the blood circulates more. Watch the breathing; it is going mad and chaotic. Watch the moment when a limit comes to your voluntariness and everything becomes involuntary. Watch the moment from where you could have come back, but beyond that there is no return. The body becomes so automatic all control is lost. Just a moment before the ejaculation you lose all control, the body takes over.

Watch it: the voluntary processes, the nonvoluntary process. The moment when you were in control and you could have gone back, the return was possible, and the moment when you cannot come back, the return has become impossible – now the body has taken over completely, you are no more in control. Watch everything – and millions of things are there. Everything is so complex and nothing is as complex as sex, because the whole bodymind is involved – only the witness is not involved, only one thing remains always outside.

The witness is an outsider. By its very nature the witness can never become an insider. Find out this witness and then you are standing on a top of the hill, and everything goes in the valley and you are not concerned. You simply see; what is your concern? It is as if it is happening to somebody else. And it is the same with greed and it is the same with anger; everything is very complex. And you will enjoy it if you can watch – negative, positive, all the emotions. You simply remember one thing, that you have to be a watcher; then the identification is broken, then the root is cut. And once the root is cut, once you think you are not the doer, everything suddenly changes. And the change is sudden, there is no gradualness to it.

Source – Osho Book “Tantra: The Supreme Understanding”

Osho – Choice is bondage, choicelessness freedom. The moment you choose something, you have fallen in the trap of the world. If you can resist the temptation to choose, if you can remain choicelessly aware, the trap disappears on its own accord, because when you don’t choose you don’t help the trap to be there – the trap is also created by your choice. So this word ”choice” has to be understood very deeply, because only through that understanding can choicelessness flower in you.

Why can’t you remain without choosing? Why does it happen the moment you see a person or a thing, immediately a subtle wave of choice has entered in you, even if you are not aware that you have chosen? A woman passes by and you say she is beautiful. You are not saying anything about your choice, but the choice has entered, for to say of a person that she is beautiful means: ”I would like to choose her.” In fact, deep down you have chosen; you are already in the trap. The seed has fallen to the soil; soon there will be sprouts, there will be a plant and a tree.

The moment you say, ”This car is beautiful,” choice has entered. You may not be aware at all that you have chosen, that you would like to possess this car, but in the mind a fantasy has entered, a desire has arisen. When you say something is beautiful, you mean that you would like to have it. When you say something is ugly, you mean that you would not like to have it.

Choice is subtle and one has to be very minutely aware about it. Whenever you say something remember this: that saying is not only saying, not a mere saying – something has happened in the unconscious. Don’t make the distinction: this is beautiful and that is ugly, this is good and that is bad. Don’t make the distinctions. Remain aloof! Things are neither bad nor good. The quality of goodness and badness is introduced by you. Things are neither beautiful nor ugly; they are simply there as they are – the quality of being beautiful and ugly is introduced by you, it is your interpretation.

What do you mean when you say something is beautiful? Is there any criterion of beauty? Can you prove it that it is beautiful? Just standing by your side, somebody may think, ”This is ugly!” – so it is nothing objective; nobody can prove anything beautiful. Thousands and thousands of books have been written on aesthetics, and it has been a long, arduous journey for intellectuals, thinkers and philosophers to define what beauty is – they have not yet been able. They have written great books, great treatises, they go round about and round about, but nobody has ever been able to pinpoint what beauty is. No, it seems impossible – because there exists nothing like beauty or ugliness, it is your interpretation.

First you make a thing beautiful. This is why I say that first you create the trap and then you fall into it. First you think this face is beautiful – this is YOUR creation, this is just your imagination, this is just your mind interpreting; this is not existential, this is just psychological – and then you yourself fall into the trap. You dig the hole and then you fall into it and then you cry for help, and then you cry for people to come to your salvation.

Nothing is needed says tantra. You simply see the whole trick – it is your own creation. What do you mean that something is ugly? If man is not on the earth will there be ugliness and beauty? Trees will be there, of course, and they will bloom; of course, rains will come, and summer and seasons will follow one another – but there will be nothing like beautiful and ugly, it will disappear with man and his mind. The sun will rise and in the night the sky will be filled with stars – but nothing will be beautiful and nothing will be ugly. It was just man creating noise. Now he is no more there the interpretations have disappeared; what will be good and what will be bad?

In nature nothing is good and nothing is bad. And remember, tantra is the loose and the natural way. It wants to bring you to the deepest, most natural phenomena of life. It wants to help you drop from the mind – and mind creates distinctions, and mind says this is to be chosen and that has to be avoided. To this you cling, and that you avoid and escape from. Look at the whole phenomenon. Just a look is needed, nothing else; no practice is needed – just a look at the whole situation.

The moon is beautiful; why? – because for centuries you have been indoctrinated that the moon is beautiful. For centuries poets have been singing about the moon, for centuries people have believed – now it has become engrained. Of course there are a few things which happen with the moon: it is very soothing, you feel calmed down, and the light of the moon gives a mysterious aroma to the whole nature; it gives a sort of hypnosis, you feel a little sleepy and awake and things look more beautiful; it gives a dreamlike quality to the world – that’s why we call madmen, lunatics. The word ”lunatic” comes from the word ”luna,” the moon. They have gone mad, moonstruck.

The moon creates a sort of lunacy, a sort of madness, a neurosis. It may be concerned with the water in your body – just like the sea is affected by the moon and tides come. Your body is ninety percent sea water. If you ask the physiologists they will say that something must be happening in the body because of the moon, because your body remains a part of the sea. Man has come from the sea to the earth; basically life was born in the sea. When the whole sea is affected, of course all sea animals are affected by the moon, they are part of the sea, and man has also come from the sea. Very very long he has traveled, but it makes no difference; the body still reacts in the same way. Ninety percent of your body is water, and not only water, sea water, with the same chemicals, same saltiness.

In the womb the child swims for nine months, floats in sea water; the mother’s womb is filled with sea water. That’s why when women are pregnant they start using, eating more salt. More salt is needed for their womb, to keep the same balance of saltiness. And the child passes through all the phases humanity has passed through. In the beginning he is just like a fish, he moves into the ocean of the mother’s womb, floats. By and by, in nine months he passes millions of years. Physiologists have come to realize that he passes through all the stages of life in nine months. That may be, that the moon affects you, but there is nothing like beauty – it is a chemical phenomenon.

Certain eyes you feel are very beautiful. What is happening? Those eyes must have a quality, a chemical quality, an electric quality in them, they must be releasing some energy – you become affected by them. You say some eyes are hypnotic, like Adolf Hitler’s eyes. Just the moment he sees you something happens in you. You say eyes are very beautiful. What do you mean by beauty? You are affected.

In fact, when you say something is beautiful you are not saying that something is beautiful, you are saying that you are affected in a nice way, that’s all. When you say something is ugly, you are saying that you are affected in an antagonistic way. You are repelled or you are attracted. When you are attracted it is beauty, when you are repelled it is ugly. But it is YOU, not the object, because the same object can attract somebody else.

It happens every day; people are always amazed about other people. They say, ”That man has fallen in love with that woman – amazing!” Nobody can believe that this can happen; that woman is ugly. But to that man, that woman is the very incarnation of beauty. What to do? There can be no objective criterion, there is none.

Tantra says: remember, whenever you choose something, whenever you decide for this or against this, it is your mind playing tricks. Don’t say the thing is beautiful; just simply say, ”I am affected in a nice way” – but the base remains ”I.” If once you transfer the whole phenomenon on the object, then it can never be solved because from the first step you missed, you missed the root. The root is you, so if you are affected it means your mind is affected in a certain way. And then that affection, that being affected, creates the trap and you start moving.

First you create a beautiful man and then you start chasing him, then you run after him. And after a few days living with a beautiful man or woman, all fantasies fall to the ground. Suddenly you become aware, as if you have been deceived, that this woman looks ordinary. And you were thinking she was a Laila or a Juliet, or you were thinking he is a Majnu or a Romeo, and suddenly, after a few days, the dreams have evaporated and the woman has become ordinary, or the man has become ordinary; then you feel disgusted, as if the other has deceived you.

Nobody has deceived and nothing has fallen from the man or woman; it is your own fantasy that has fallen – because fantasies cannot be maintained. You can dream about them but you cannot maintain them for a long time. Fantasies are fantasies! So if you really want to continue in your fantasy, then when you see a beautiful woman, immediately escape from her as far as you can. Then you will always remember her as the most beautiful woman in the world. Then the fantasy will never come in contact with reality. Then there will be no shattering. You can always sigh and sing and weep and cry for the beautiful woman – but never go near her!

The nearer you come, the more reality, the more objective reality, reveals itself. And when there is a clash between objective reality and your fantasy, of course you know who is going to be defeated – your fantasy. Objective reality cannot be defeated. This is the situation. And tantra says become aware: nobody is deceiving you except yourself. The
woman was not trying to be very beautiful, she was not creating the fantasy around her, YOU created it around her; you believed it, and now you are at a loss what to do, because the fantasy cannot be continued against reality. A dream has to break – and that is the criterion.

Hindus in the East have made a criterion of truth: they say truth is that which lasts forever, forever, forever; and untruth is that which lasts only for a moment. No other distinction is there. The momentary is the untrue and the everlasting is the truth. And life is everlasting; existence is everlasting. Mind is momentary – so whatsoever mind gives to life remains momentary; it is a color that the mind gives to the life, it is an interpretation. By the time the interpretation is complete, the mind has changed. You cannot maintain the interpretation because mind cannot be maintained for two consecutive moments in the same situation in the same state. Mind goes on changing, mind is a flux. It has already changed – by the time you realize that this man is beautiful, the mind has already changed. Now you will be falling in love with something which is there no more, even in your mind.

Tantra says: understand the mechanism of the mind and cut the root. Don’t choose, because when you choose you get identified. Whatsoever you choose you become, in a certain way, one with it. If you love a car, you become one with that car in a certain way. You come closer and closer, and if the car is stolen, something of your being is stolen. If something goes wrong with the car, something goes wrong with you. If you fall in love with a house you become one with the house. Love means identification; coming so close, as if you put two wax candles closer, closer, closer, and put them very close – they become one. The heat, the burning of the flame… by and by they become one. This is identification. Two flames coming closer and closer and closer, they become one.

And when you are identified with something you have lost your soul. This is the meaning of losing your soul in the world: you have become identified with millions of things, and with everything a part of you has become a thing. Choice brings identification. Identification brings a hypnotic state of sleep. Gurdjieff has only one thing to teach to his disciples and that is not to be identified. His whole school, all his techniques, methods, situations, are based on one single base, and that base is: not to be identified.

You are crying; when you are crying, you have become one with the crying. There is nobody to watch it, there is nobody to see it; be alert and aware of it – you are lost in crying. You have become the tears and the red, swollen eyes and your heart is in a crisis. Teachers like Gurdjieff, when they say not to be identified, they say, ”Cry, nothing is wrong in it, but stand by the side and look at it – don’t be identified.” And it is a wonderful experience if you can stand by the side. Cry, let the body cry, let the tears flow, don’t suppress it because suppression helps nobody, but stand by the side and watch.

This can be done – because your inner being is a witness, it is never a doer. Whenever you think it is a doer there is an identification. It is never a doer. You can walk the whole earth – your inner being never walks a single step. You can dream millions of dreams – your inner being never dreams a single dream. All movements are on the surface. Deep in the depth of your being there is no movement. All movements are on the periphery, just like a wheel moves, but at the center nothing moves. At that center everything remains as it is, and on the center the wheel moves.

Remember the center! Watch your behavior, your actions, your identifications, and a distance is created; by and by a distance comes into existence – the watcher and the doer become two. You can see yourself laughing, you can see yourself crying, you can see yourself walking, eating, making love; you can act many things, whatsoever is going on around – and you remain the seer. You don’t jump and become one with whatsoever you are seeing.

This is the trouble. Whatsoever happens you start saying: you are hungry, you say, ”I am hungry” – you have become identified with the hunger. But just look inside; are you hunger, or is hunger happening to you? Are you hunger or are you simply aware of the hunger happening in the body? You cannot be hunger; otherwise, when the hunger has disappeared, where will you be? When you have eaten well and the belly is full and you are satiated, where will you be if you are hunger? Evaporated? No, then immediately you become the satiety. Before the hunger disappears a new identification has to be created; you become the satiety. You were a child and you thought you were a child; now where are you because you are no more a child? You have become a young man or you have become old – who are you now? Again you are identified with youth or old age.

The innermost being is just like a mirror. Whatsoever comes before it, it mirrors, it simply becomes a witness. Disease comes or health, hunger or satiety, summer or winter, childhood or old age, birth or death – whatsoever happens, happens before the mirror, it never happens TO the mirror.

This is nonidentification, this is cutting the root, the very root – to become a mirror. And to me this is sannyas: to become like a mirror. Don’t become like a very sensitive photoplate – that is identification. Whatsoever comes before the lens of the camera, the photoplate immediately takes it in, becomes one with it. Become like a mirror. Things come and pass and the mirror remains vacant, empty, void.

Source – Osho Book “Tantra: The Supreme Understanding”

Question – How did tantra grow out of buddhism which, as far as i know, views sex as a hindrance to meditation?

Osho – It is related to the first question. What Buddha said must have been misunderstood. Yes, he said that to go into meditation one has to go beyond sex. Now, the people who heard him thought he was against sex, naturally so – he said you have to go beyond sex. They started thinking ’Sex must be a hindrance then, otherwise why do you have to go beyond sex?’ They started fighting with sex rather than going beyond it; their whole emphasis changed. They started fighting with sex, and Buddhism became one of the most ascetic religions of the world.

Can’t you observe his tremendous grace in the statue of Buddha or in his pictures – can it come out of ascetism? Is it possible that this beautiful being, this graceful face, this love, this compassion can come out of ascetism? Ascetics are people who torture themselves; and when a person tortures himself he starts torturing others too with a vengeance. When a person is in misery himself, he cannot see anybody else being happy; he starts destroying others’ happiness too. That’s what your so-called MAHATMAS go on doing: they can’t see you happy, so whenever you are happy, they immediately come and say ’There must be something wrong, a happy person means a sinner’ You can observe it in yourself also, because down the centuries your so-called MAHATMAS and saints have conditioned you to feel guilt whenever you feel happy. Whenever you are miserable, everything is okay. But if you are feeling great joy, you start feeling a little uneasiness – somehow it doesn’t seem to be right. Have you not watched it in yourself? From where does it come? Happiness… and not right? And misery is ’okay.’

Something very antagonistic to life – very life-negative, very life-denying – has entered into the bloodstream of humanity. And it has come through those so-called ascetics. These ascetics are neurotic people: they are masochists, they torture themselves. Their only joy is in creating more and more misery.

Buddha is not a masochist – cannot be. Buddha looks so beautiful, so joyful, so happy, so tremendously blissful. Those who were hearing him have misunderstood somewhere. Yes, he says go beyond sex. One has to go beyond it because it is only the first rung of the ladder. But he is not saying go against it. Going beyond is not necessarily going against. In fact, the contrary is the case. If you go against sex you will never be able to go beyond it. Going beyond comes only through going through. You have to understand sex, you have to befriend sex.

Something, somewhere, got misinterpreted. Saraha comes as a right interpretation of Buddha. And Saraha must have watched what a calamity had happened to thousands of people who were following Buddha: rather than going beyond sex, they had become obsessed with it. When you are continuously fighting with something you become obsessed with it.

You can watch it: a person who believes in fasting becomes obsessed with food. Mahatma Gandhi was obsessed with food, continuously thinking about food – what to eat and what not to eat. As if that seemed to be the only important thing in life – what to eat and what not to eat. Ordinary people are less obsessed; they are not thinking about it too much. Do a three-day fast, and think about what goes on in your mind. You will think about food continuously. Now, going beyond food is good, but fasting cannot be the way, because fasting creates an obsession with food. How can it be the way to go beyond it? If you really want to go beyond food, you have to eat rightly. You have to eat the right food, you have to eat it in a right way at the right time. You have to find out what suits your body, what is nourishing.

Yes, that will take you beyond food: you will never think about food. When the body is nourished, you don’t think about food. So many people think about food because in some way or other they are fasting. You will be surprised when I say that. You may be eating too much ice-cream – that is a sort of fast because it is not nourishing; you are simply throwing rotten things inside you. They don’t satisfy: they fill you but they don’t fulfil you. You feel stuffed but not contented.

Wrong food will create discontent, and your hunger will not be satisfied because hunger needs nourishment not food. Remember, hunger is for nourishment NOT for food! And hunger does not bother much about taste. The basic thing is whether it suits your body, whether it gives your body the needed energy. If it gives the needed energy then it is okay. If taste goes with right nourishment, you will be tremendously satisfied.

And remember, I am not against taste, I am all for it. But just taste cannot be nourishing. And just food without taste is unintelligent, stupid. When you can have both, why not? An intelligent person will find nourishing food, tasteful food. It is not such a big problem. Man can go to the moon and cannot find a nourishing food for himself? Man has done miracles and cannot satisfy his hunger? This does not seem to be the right situation. No, man has not looked into it.

There are people who believe in fasts – they destroy the body. And then there are people who go on stuffing any rubbish – they destroy the body. Both are in the same boat: both are fasting, and both are continuously obsessed. One is obsessed through indulgence, the other is oppressed through repression. Just in the middle is transcendence. So is the case with sex, and so is the case with everything in life.

Saraha must have become aware that the people who said Buddha had said to go beyond sex, were not going beyond at all. Rather, they were becoming more and more obsessed with it and falling deeper into its mire.

There was a young nun who went to the Mother Superior in some distress, and after a great deal of beating about the bush, admitted she was pregnant.
’Who was it? Who was this wicked, wicked man?’ said the Mother Superior.
’Oh, Reverend Mother, I wouldn’t commit a carnal offence with a man!’ exclaimed the nun.
’Well, it wasn’t fathered by a woman, was it?’ said the Mother Superior, beginning to lose her temper.
’No, indeed, Blessed Mother, but it was fathered by one of the Holy Angels.’ SIMPER, SIMPER.
’Holy Angels what is this nonsense?’
’Yes, Blessed Mother, he came down to me in the middle of the night in my sleep, and when I asked who he was, he said ”Saint Michael” and showed me his name on his vest to prove it.’

Once you are against something you will find some ways to get out of it. You will find some back door. Man is cunning. If you repress something, the cunning mind will find some other way. That’s why you dream about sex. Your saints dream too much about sex; they have to. In the day they can deny, but in the night… When they are conscious they can repress, but when they are asleep… then, in the dream, sex takes great, fantastic colours; it becomes psychedelic. And then in the morning they feel guilty, and because they feel guilty they repress more. And when they repress more, the next night they have an even more beautiful dream of sex – or horrible, according to them. It depends on how you interpret it whether it is beautiful or horrible.

A ’difficult’ schoolgirl of fifteen was sent to the psychologist, who asked her a number of very personal questions. He was sure that sex lay at the bottom of the trouble, and asked her ’Do you suffer from sexy or erotic dreams?’
’Certainly not!’
’Are you sure?’
’Quite sure’ said the girl ’in fact, I enjoy them.’

It depends on you whether you call them beautiful or horrible. In the night they are beautiful, in the morning they become horrible. In the night you enjoy them, in the morning you suffer. And there is a vicious circle created, and your so-called saint goes on moving in this vicious circle: the day he suffers, the night he enjoys, the day he suffers, the night he enjoys – and he is torn between these two.

And if you look deep down into yourself you will find it easily. Whatsoever you repress will remain there, you cannot get rid of it. The repressed remains, only the expressed disappears. The expressed evaporates, the repressed remains and not only remains, but it becomes more and more powerful. As time passes by, it becomes more and more powerful.

Saraha must have looked at what had happened after two hundred years of Buddha – wrong interpretations, and people were almost obsessed with sex. Out of that obsession of the Buddhist monks and nuns, Tantra was born as a rebellion a rebellion against Buddhism, not against Buddha. Through that rebellion, Saraha brought Buddha’s spirit back. Yes, one has to transcend sex, but the transcendence happens through understanding.

Tantra believes in understanding. Understand a thing totally and you are free of its clutches. Anything not understood rightly will remain as a hangover. So you are right. You ask: HOW DID TANTRA GROW OUT OF BUDDHISM WHICH, AS FAR AS I KNOW, VIEWS SEX AS A HINDRANCE TO MEDITATION? Precisely because of that. It is a rebellion against Buddhism, and it is for Buddha. It goes against the followers, but not against the Master. The followers were carrying the letter, and Saraha brings back the spirit. Saraha is a reincarnation of the same enlightenment as Buddha was. Saraha is a Buddha.

Source – Osho Book “The Tantra Vision, Vol 2″

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Question – How is it that great masters like Chogyam Trungpa get so drunk on occasional festivities that they have to be carried home? Can the use of alcohol for enjoyment disturb a certain awareness of seekers?

Osho - Who told you that this man is a Master? He belongs to a tradition in which many Masters have existed, but he carries just the dead load. And this is the trouble because in the tradition to which he belongs there have been men like Marpa, Milarepa, Naropa, Tilopa — great siddhas — and they all used to drink, now this is delicate, but they never got drunk. They used to drink, but they never got drunk.

That is one of the ways of tantra, a method: one has to go on increasing the amount of alcohol and getting attuned to it, but remaining conscious. Hmm?… first you take just one teaspoonful. you remain conscious; then two; then three; then you go on. Then you drink the whole bottle. But now you are so attuned your consciousness is not disturbed; then alcohol won’t do. Then you move to more dangerous drugs.

There came a time in the tradition of tantra when snakes, poisonous snakes, were used because a man became so attuned to all types of drugs. Then the last test was the snake cobra. Then the cobra was forced to bite the man on the tongue — then too he remained conscious.

This was a secret test and a growth: now you have achieved to such crystallization of consciousness that the whole body is filled with alcohol but it doesn’t affect you. This was a point in tantra to go beyond the body; this is going beyond the body — for tantra.

This man comes from that tradition, so he has the permission from the tradition to drink, but if he gets drunk then he has missed the whole point; he not a Master; he is not aware. But in America everything is possible now. Not knowing the old tradition. this man can say to people, “Even our own Masters have been drinking.” In tantra all those things that are ordinarily prohibited are allowed. A tantric is allowed to eat meat — ordinarily it is prohibited; he is allowed to drink ordinarily it is prohibited; he is allowed to have sex — ordinarily for a seeker it is prohibited. Everything that is prohibited ordinarily, is allowed in tantra, but allowed with such conditions that if you forget the conditions you forget the whole thing.

One should go in sex, but there should be no ejaculation. If ejaculation happens, then it is ordinary sex; then it is not tantra. If you make love and no ejaculation happens, for hours you are together with the woman and no ejaculation happens, this is tantra. This is an attainment. Drinking is allowed, but getting drunk is not allowed. If you get drunk you are an ordinary drunkard — no need to bring tantra in.

Meat is allowed, but you have to eat meat — even sometimes human meat, human flesh, from dead bodies — but you should remain indifferent. You should remain unperturbed — not even a flicker in your consciousness that “something wrong….”

Osho – You can go on changing your husband or your wife a thousand and one times, you will again find the same type of woman and the same misery repeated in different forms – but the same misery repeated; it is almost the same. You can change your wife, but you are not changed. Now who is going to choose the other wife? You will choose. The choice will come out of your immaturity again. You will choose a similar type of woman again.

The basic problem of love is to first become mature, then you will find a mature partner; then immature people will not attract you at all. It is just like that. If you are twenty-five years of age, you don’t fall in love with a baby two years old, you don’t fall. Exactly like that. When you are a mature person psychologically, spiritually, you don’t fall in love with a baby. It does not happen, it CANNOT happen. You can see that it is going to be meaningless.

In fact a mature person does not fall in love, he rises in love. The word ’fall’ is not right. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. They cannot manage and they cannot stand – they find a woman and they are gone, they find a man and they are gone. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don’t have the backbone, the spine; they don’t have that integrity to stand alone.

A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it: he simply gives. And when a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it – no, not at all, he does not even need your thanks. He thanks you for accepting his love. And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone; they are together so much so that they are almost one. But their oneness does not destroy their individuality, in fact, it enhances it: they become more individual.

Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. How can you dominate the person you love? Just think over it. Domination is a sort of hatred, anger, enmity. How can you think of dominating a person you love? You would love to see the person totally free, independent; you will give him more individuality. That’s why I call it the greatest paradox: they are together so much so that they are almost one, but still in that oneness they are individuals. Their individualities are not effaced – they have become more enhanced. The other has enriched them as far as their freedom is concerned.

Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.

Remember, freedom is a higher value than love. That’s why in India, the ultimate we call MOKSHA; MOKSHA means freedom. Freedom is a higher value than love. So if love is destroying freedom, it is not of worth. Love can be dropped; freedom has to be saved: freedom is a higher value. And without freedom you can never be happy – that is not possible. Freedom is the intrinsic desire of each man, each woman – utter freedom, absolute freedom. So anything that becomes destructive to freedom – one starts hating it.

Don’t you hate the man you love? Don’t you hate the woman you love? You hate. It is a necessary evil; you have to tolerate it. Because you cannot be alone you have to manage to be with somebody, and you have to adjust to the other’s demands. You have to tolerate, you have to bear them. Love, to be really love, has to be ’being-love’, ’gift-love’. ’Being-love’ means a state of love. When you have arrived home, when you have known who you are, then a love arises in your being. Then the fragrance spreads and you can give it to others. How can you give something which you don’t have? To give it, the first basic requirement is to have it.

Source: from Osho Book “The Tantra Vision Volume 2″

Osho – The first thing: There are two kinds of love. C.S. Lewis has divided love into these two kinds: ’need-love’ and ’gift-love’. Abraham Maslow also divides love into two kinds. The first he calls ’deficiency-love’ and the second he calls ’being-love’. The distinction is significant and has to be understood.

The ’need-love’ or the ’deficiency-love’ depends on the other; it is immature love. In fact it is not truly love – it is a need. You use the other, you use the other as a means. You exploit, you manipulate, you dominate. But the other is reduced, the other is almost destroyed. And exactly the same is being done by the other. He is trying to manipulate you, to dominate you, to possess you, to use you. To use another human being is very unloving.

So it only appears like love; it is a false coin. But this is what happens to almost ninety-nine per cent of people because the first lesson of love that you learn is in your childhood.

A child is born, he depends on the mother. His love towards the mother is a ’deficiency-love’: he needs the mother, he cannot survive without the mother. He loves the mother because mother is his LIFE.

In fact, there is no love; he will love any woman – whosoever will protect him, whosoever will help him to survive, whosoever will fill up his need. The mother is a sort of food that he eats. It is not only milk that he gets from the mother, it is love also – and that too is a need. Millions of people remain childish all their lives; they never grow up. They grow in age, but they never grow in their minds; their psychology remains juvenile, immature. They are always needing love. They are hankering for it like food.

Man becomes mature the moment he starts loving rather than needing. He starts overflowing, sharing; he starts giving. The emphasis is totally different. With the first, the emphasis is on how to get more. With the second, the emphasis is on how to give, how to give more, and how to give unconditionally. This is growth, maturity, coming to you.

A mature person gives. Only a mature person can give, because only a mature person has it. Then love is not dependent. Then you can be loving whether the other is or is not. Then love is not a relationship, it is a state. What will happen if all the disciples disappear and only I am here? Do you think there will be any change? What happens when a flower blooms in a deep forest with nobody to appreciate it, nobody to know its fragrance, nobody to pass a comment and say ’beautiful’, nobody to taste its beauty, its joy, nobody to share – what happens to the flower? It dies? It suffers? It becomes panicky? It commits suicide? It goes on blooming, it simply goes on blooming. It does not make any difference whether somebody passes by or not; it is irrelevant.

It goes on spreading its fragrance to the winds. It goes on offering its joy to God, to the whole. If I am alone, then too, I will be as loving as when I am with you. It is not you who are creating my love. If you were creating my love, then naturally, when you are gone, my love will be gone. You are not pulling my love out – I am showering it on you: it is ’gift-love’, it is ’being-love’.

And I don’t really agree with C.S. Lewis and Abraham Maslow. The first love that they call ’love’ is not love, it is a need. How can a need be love? Love is a luxury. It is abundance. It is having so much life that you don’t know what to do with it, so you share. It is having so many songs in your heart that you have to sing them – whether anybody listens or not is not relevant. If nobody listens, then also you will have to sing it, you will have to dance your dance.

The other can have it, the other can miss it – but as far as you are concerned, it is flowing, it is overflowing. Rivers don’t flow for you; they are flowing whether you are there or not. They don’t flow for your thirst, they don’t flow for your thirsty fields; they are simply flowing there. You can quench your thirst, you can miss – that’s up to you. The river was not really flowing for you, the river was just flowing. It is accidental that you can get the water for your field, it is accidental that you can get water for your needs.

A Master is a river, the disciple is accidental. The Master is flowing; you can partake, you can enjoy, you can share his being. You can be overwhelmed by him, but he is not FOR you. He is not flowing for you in particular, he is simply flowing. Remember this. And this I call mature love, real love, authentic love, true love.

When you depend on the other there is always misery. The moment you depend, you start feeling miserable, because dependence is slavery. Then you start taking revenge in subtle ways, because the person you have to depend upon becomes powerful over you. Nobody likes anybody to be powerful over them, nobody likes to be dependent; because dependence kills freedom, and love cannot flower in dependence. Love is a flower of freedom – it needs space, it needs absolute space. The other has not to interfere with it. It is very delicate.

When you are dependent, the other will certainly dominate you, and you will try to dominate the other. That’s the fight that goes on between so-called lovers; they are intimate enemies – Continuously fighting. Husbands and wives – what are they doing?

Loving is very rare; fighting is the rule, loving is an exception. And in every way they try to dominate – even through love they try to dominate. If the husband asks the wife, the wife denies – she is reluctant. She is very miserly: she gives, but very reluctantly; she wants you to wave your tail around her. And so is the case with the husband. When the wife is in need and asks him, the husband says that he is tired. In the office there was too much work, ’really overworked’, and he would like to go to sleep.

Source: from Osho Book “The Tantra Vision Volume 2″

Osho – Tara is also the name of a tantra goddess. There are two traditions of tantra – one is Hindu, another is Buddhist. In the Buddhist tradition tara is the name of the tantra goddess. And every Buddhist tantrika has to practise the idea of the goddess with the beloved.

When a tantra worshipper is making love to his woman, first, for months he has to visualise the woman as being the goddess Tara. By and by the visualisation becomes settled; by and by he completely forgets that she is a human being. When she is no more a human being, only then is love allowed, not before it. The master goes on watching, the master has to observe, and until the moment that the master allows them to move into love-making they are to remain celibates because before that moment it will not be love; it will be simply lust.

So every day for hours the practitioner will sit in front of the woman. The woman will be on a high pedestal, sitting naked, nude, and he will simply sit and look at her for hours together and imagine – in the beginning it is imagination, visualisation – that she is divine, that she is not his woman, that she is the mother-goddess Tara. And by and by, months, sometimes years pass, by and by the body is no more human – it is no more
made of bones and skin and blood; it starts becoming golden.

In fact it is so; the visualisation does not create a projection – it simply helps you to see the reality as it is. It simply helps you to drop the concept, the hypnotic concept, that the body consists only of the physical. Once you are helped through imagination this body no more really seems relevant; there is another body hidden behind it that starts being realised.

And this happens not only to the man: the woman is also continuously meditating on the same phenomenon – that she is no more a human being, that she is no more a woman and the man in front of her is no more a lover but a child and she a mother-goddess.

They both go on creating this harmony; one day it happens and it happens together – to both of them. That’s the beauty of it, it synchronises: when it happens, it happens to both. And then there is no doubt about it. It is not that the man is still uncertain as to whether it is his imagination – if he is uncertain, it has not happened. When it really happens there is no uncertainty, no doubt – it is one hundred percent so. And suddenly both become divine; it is a transfiguration. In that moment one can see their auras meeting, and the master then allows them: now they can move in love. Now there will really be love, no lust, it is no more sex. It is something divine, something of samadhi.

Question – Beloved Osho, do you see shortcomings in the teachings of tantra that incline you to feel tantric methods are not suitable for us?

Osho – It is not a complete system. There is a basic fallacy that human beings fall into: they find a small truth, a part of the truth, and rather than discover the whole, the remaining part they imagine to fill up the gap. Because they have part of the truth, they can argue and they can manage to make a system, but the remaining part is simply their invention.

All the systems have done that. Rather than discovering the whole truth, it is the human tendency to say, “Why bother? We have found a small piece which is enough for the showcase, which is enough to silence any enemy who raises any question” — and the remaining is just invention.

For example, tantra is right that sexual energy is the basic energy, so this energy should be transformed into higher forms. It is a truth. But what happened is that they never went very deep into meditation; meditation remained just secondary. And man’s sexuality shows itself so powerfully that in the name of tantra it became simply sexual orgy. Without meditation that was going to happen. Meditation should have been the most primary thing because that is going to transform the energy, but that became secondary.

And many people who were sexually perverted, sexually repressed, joined the tantra school. These were the people who brought all their perversions, all their repressions. They were not interested in any transformation, they were interested only in getting rid of their repressions; their interest was basically sexual.

So although tantra has a piece of truth, it could not be used rightly. Unless that piece of truth is put in second place, and meditation moves into first place, it will always happen that in tantra, people will be doing all kinds of perversions. And with a great name, they will not feel that they are doing anything wrong; they will feel they are doing something religious, something spiritual.

Tantra failed for two reasons. One was an inner reason — that meditation was not made the central point. And second, tantra had no special methodology for the perverted and the repressed, so that first their repressions and perversions are settled and they become normal. And once they become normal, then they are introduced to meditation. Only after deep meditation should they be allowed in tantra experiments. It was a wrong arrangement, so the whole thing became, in the name of a great system, just an exploitation of sex.

That’s what many of the therapists are doing. Just the other day I saw Rajen’s advertisement for a tantra group — with an obscene picture. It will attract people because this is real pornography. Why bother to go to see just pictures printed on paper when you can see real people doing pornography? And Rajen has no understanding of meditation, has never meditated.

And these people will feel good, relieved, because the society does not allow them… In the group they will be allowed to do everything they want to do, so much repression will be thrown out, and they will feel relieved and light and they will feel thankful that they have gone through a great tantra experience. And there has been no tantra experience — it was simply a sexual orgy. And within a few days, they will again collect repressions because they cannot do it outside in the society. So they become permanent customers, chronic tantrikas.

And the so-called therapists enjoy the money that they bring. They have nothing to lose, they simply allow freedom. They start with all the great words that I have been using — “freedom,” “expression,” “no repression,” “just be yourself, and don’t be worried what others are thinking,” “do your own thing.” And those idiots start doing their own thing!

First people should be introduced to meditation, and then they should be introduced to tantra methods. This is not tantra. Tantra methods are totally different. These people who are doing tantra, they don’t know anything about tantra.

For example, Ramakrishna meditated deeply, and whenever he felt any sexual urge disturbing his meditation he would ask his wife Sharda — who was a beautiful woman — to sit on a high stool, naked, and he would sit in front of her just looking at her, meditating on her till that sexual urge subsided. Then he would touch the feet of Sharda, his own wife, and he would thank her, saying, “You have been helping me immensely; otherwise, where would I have gone? The urge needed some expression, and just watching you was enough.”

The temple of Khajuraho has beautiful statues in all sexual postures. It was a tantra school that made the temple and those statues. And the first thing the student had to do was to meditate on each statue — and they are arranged in such a way that from one corner you go around the temple in a circle. It may take six months, but you have to watch each statue until you can see it just as a statue with no sexuality in it — and it is in a sexual posture.

But just in your watching it, seeing it for months, it becomes a pure piece of art; all pornography disappears. Then you move to another. And all the perversions of human mind have been put into the statues.

And when you have circled the whole temple, only then will the master allow you inside the temple. Those six months are of immense meditation and of tremendous release, all repressions gone: you are feeling absolutely light. Then the master allows you in. And inside the temple there is no sexual statue; inside the temple there is nothing — emptiness.

Then the master teaches you how to go deeper into your meditation which has arisen in the six months, and now you can go very deep because there is no hindrance, no problem, no sexuality. And this going deep into meditation with no sexual disturbance means the sexual energy is moving with the meditation, not against it. That’s how it is transformed and takes higher forms.

All these so-called therapists know nothing about tantra, know nothing of why it failed. But they are not interested in that, they are interested in exploiting repressed people. And the repressed people are happy because after a seven or ten day tantra session, they feel relieved; they think this is some spiritual growth. But within two or three days all that spiritual growth will be gone, and they are ready for another group.

There are some people — you can call them “groupies” — that move from one group to another group to another group. Their whole life is just a movement from group to group. Just like hippies… but you can call them “groupies.”

Source: from Osho Book “The Path of the Mystic”

Osho : FIRST, IN TANTRA, spontaneity is the greatest value – to be just natural, to allow nature to happen. Not to obstruct it, not to hinder it; not to distract it, not to take it in some other direction where it was not going on its own. To surrender to nature, to flow with it.

Not pushing the river, but going with it – ALL the way, wherever it leads. This trust is Tantra. Spontaneity is its mantra, its greatest foundation. Spontaneity means: you don’t interfere, you are in a let-go. Whatsoever happens, you watch, you are a witness to it.

You know it is happening, but you don’t jump into it, and you don’t try to change its course. Spontaneity means you don’t have any direction. Spontaneity means you don’t have any goal to attain; if you have some goal to attain you cannot be spontaneous.

How can you be spontaneous if suddenly your nature is going one way and your goal is not? How can you be spontaneous? You will drag yourself towards the goal. That’s what millions of people are doing – dragging themselves towards some imaginary goal.

And because they are dragging themselves towards some imaginary goal, they are missing the natural destiny – which is the only goal! And that’s why there is so much frustration, and so much misery and so much hell – because whatsoever you do will never satisfy your nature.

That’s why people are dull and dead. They live, and yet they live not. They are moving like prisoners, chained. Their movement is not that of freedom, their movement is not that of dance – it cannot be because they are fighting, they are continuously in a fight with themselves.

There is a conflict, each moment: you want to eat this, and your religion does not prescribe it; you want to move with this woman, but that will not be respectable. You want to live this way, but the society prohibits it. You want to be in one way, you feel that that is how you can flower, but everybody else is against it.

So do you listen to your being? or do you listen to everybody else’s advice? If you listen to everybody’s advice, your life will be an empty life of nothing but frustration. You will finish without ever being alive; you will die without ever knowing what life is.

But the society has created such conditioning in you that it is not only outside – it is sitting inside you. That’s what conscience is all about. Whatsoever you want to do, your conscience says, ”Don’t do it!” The conscience is your parental voice; the priest and the politician speak through it. It is a great trick.

They have made a conscience in you – from the very childhood when you were not aware at all of what was being done to you, they have put a conscience in you. So whenever you go against the conscience, you feel guilt Guilt means you have done something which others don’t want you to do. So whenever you are natural you are guilty, and whenever you are not guilty you are unnatural: this is the dilemma, this is the dichotomy, this is the problem.

If you listen to your own naturalness, you feel guilty; then there is misery. You start feeling you have done something wrong. You start hiding; you start defending yourself; you start continuously pretending that you have not done it, and you are afraid – somebody is bound to catch you sooner or later.

You will be caught… and anxiety, and guilt, and fear. And you lose all love with life. Whenever you do something against others, you feel guilty. And whenever you do something that others say, you never feel happy doing it – because it has never been your own thing to do. Between these two is man caught.