"Tantra - Total Acceptance"

    

    Madness is so normal that not to be mad may look abnormal. A Buddha is abnormal, a Jesus is abnormal amidst us. They do not belong to us. This ”normalcy” is a disease. This ”normal” mind has created the appeal of yoga. If you take sex naturally – with no philosophy around it, with no philosophy for or against – if you take sex as you take your hands, your eyes; if it is totally accepted as a natural thing, then tantra will have an appeal. And only then can tantra be useful for many.

    But the days of tantra are coming. Sooner or later tantra will explode for the first time in the masses, because for the first time the time is ripe – ripe to take sex naturally. It is possible that the explosion may come from the West, because Freud, Jung, Reich, they have prepared the background. They did not know anything about tantra, but they have made the basic ground for tantra to evolve. Western psychology has come to a conclusion that the basic human disease is somewhere around sex, the basic insanity of man is sex-oriented.

    So unless this sex orientation is dissolved, man cannot be natural, normal. Man has gone wrong only because of his attitudes about sex. No attitude is needed. Only then are you natural. What attitude have you about your eyes? Are they evil or are they divine? Are you for your eyes or against them? There is no attitude! That is why your eyes are normal. 

    Take some attitude – think that eyes are evil. Then seeing will become difficult. Then seeing will take the same problematic shape that sex has taken. Then you will want to see, you will desire and you will hanker to see. But when you see you will feel guilty. Whenever you see you will feel guilty that you have done something wrong, that you have sinned. You would like to kill your very instrument of seeing; you would like to destroy your eyes. And the more you want to destroy them, the more you will become eye centered. Then you will start a very absurd activity. You will want to see more and more, and simultaneously you will feel more and more guilty. The same has happened with the sex center.

    Tantra says, accept whatsoever you are. This is the basic note – total acceptance. And only through total acceptance can you grow. Then use every energy you have. How can you use them? Accept them, then find out what these energies are – what is sex, what is this phenomenon. We are not acquainted with it. We know many things about sex, taught by others. We may have passed through the sex act, but with a guilty mind, with a suppressive attitude, in haste, in a hurry. Something has to be done in order to become unburdened. The sex act is not a loving act. You are not happy in it, but you cannot leave it. The more you try to leave it, the more attractive it becomes. The more you want to negate it, the more you feel invited. 

    You cannot negate it, but this attitude to negate, to destroy, destroys the very mind, the very awareness, the very sensitivity which can understand it. So sex goes on with no sensitivity into it. Then you cannot understand it. Only a deep sensitivity can understand anything; only a deep feeling, a deep moving into it, can understand anything. You can understand sex only if you move in it as a poet moves amidst flowers – only then! If you feel guilty about flowers, you may pass through the garden, but you will pass with closed eyes. And you will be in a hurry, in a deep, mad haste. Somehow you have to go out of the garden. Then how can you be aware?

    So tantra says, accept whatsoever you are. You are a great mystery of many multidimensional energies. Accept it, and move with every energy with deep sensitivity, with awareness, with love, with understanding. Move with it! Then every desire becomes a vehicle to go beyond it. Then every energy becomes a help. And then this very world is nirvana, this very body is a temple – a holy temple, a holy place. 

    Yoga is negation; tantra is affirmation. Yoga thinks in terms of duality – that is the reason for the word ‘yoga’. It means to put two things together, to ‘yoke’ two things together. But two things are there; the duality is there. Tantra says there is no duality. If there is duality, then you cannot put them together. And howsoever you try they will remain two. Howsoever put together they will remain two, and the fight will continue, the dualism will remain.

    If the world and the divine are two, then they cannot be put together. If really they are not two, if they are only appearing as two, only then can they be one. If your body and your soul are two, then they cannot be put together. If you and God are two, then there is no possibility of putting them together. They will remain two. 

    Tantra says there is no duality; it is only an appearance. So why help appearance to grow stronger? Tantra asks, why help this appearance of duality to grow stronger? Dissolve it this very moment! Be one! Through acceptance you become one, not through fight. Accept the world, accept the body, accept everything that is inherent in it. Do not create a different center in yourself, because for tantra that different center is nothing but the ego. Do not create an ego. Just be aware of what you are. If you fight, then the ego will be there.