"Self Realisation"

 

    All of the energies within you are accepted by tantra. Tantra is not for discarding anything whatsoever, but for transformation. And tantra says that the first step is to accept. The first step is very difficult – to accept. You may be getting angry many times every day, but to accept your anger is very difficult. To be angry is very easy; to accept your anger is very difficult. Why? You do not feel so much difficulty in being angry, so why do you feel so much difficulty in accepting it? Getting angry seems not so bad as accepting it. Everyone thinks he is a good man and anger is just momentary, it comes and goes. It doesn’t destroy your self-image. You go on remaining good. You say that ”It just happened.” It is not destructive to your ego.

    So those who are cunning will repent immediately. They will get angry and they will repent, they will ask for forgiveness. These are the cunning ones. Why do I call them cunning? Because their anger gives a trembling to their self-image. They begin to feel uneasy. They begin to feel, ”I get angry? I am so bad that I get angry?” So the image of a good man trembles. He has to try and make it established again. Immediately he says, ”This was bad. I will never do it again. Forgive me.” By asking for forgiveness his self-image is established again. He is okay – back to his previous state when there was no anger. He has canceled his anger by asking for forgiveness. He has called himself bad just to remain good.

    That is why you can go on for lives together being angry, being sexual, being possessive, being this and that, but never accepting. This is a trick of the mind. Whatsoever you do is just on the periphery. In the center, you remain good. If you accept that ”I have anger,” in the center you become bad. Then it is not just a question of getting angry, then it is not momentary. Rather, then anger is part of your constitution. Then it is not that someone irritates you into anger. Even if you are alone, the anger is there. When you are not getting angry the anger is still there, because anger is your energy, part of you.    

    It is not that sometimes it flares up and then goes off – no! It cannot flare up if it is not always present. You can turn off this light, you can turn on this light; but the current must remain continuously there. If the current is not there, you cannot turn it on and off. The current, the anger current, is always there; the sex current is always there, the greed current is always there. You can turn it on, you can turn it off. In situations you change, but inwardly you remain the same.

    Accepting means anger is not an act. Rather, YOU are anger. Sex is not just an act; YOU are sex. Greed is not just an act; YOU are greed. Accepting this means throwing away the self-image. And we all have built beautiful self-images. Everyone has built a beautiful self-image – absolutely beautiful. And whatsoever you are doing never touches it, you go on protecting it. The image is protected, so you feel good. That is why you can become angry, you can become sexual, and you are not disturbed. But if you accept and say, ”I am sex, I am anger, I am greed,” then your self-image falls down immediately.

    Tantra says this is the first step, and the most difficult: to accept whatsoever you are. Sometimes we try to accept, but whenever we accept we again do so in a very calculated way. Our cunningness is deep and subtle, and mind has very subtle ways to deceive. Sometimes you accept and say, ”Yes, I am angry.” But if you accept this, you accept only when you think of how to transcend anger. Then you accept and say, ”Okay, I am angry. Now tell me how to go beyond it.” You accept sex only to be non-sexual. Whenever you are trying to be something else you are able to accept, because your self-image is again maintained by the future.

    You are violent and you are striving to be nonviolent, so you accept and say, ”Okay, I am violent. Today I am violent, but tomorrow I will be nonviolent, however.” How will you become nonviolent? You postpone this self-image into the future. You do not think of yourself in the present. You always think in terms of the ideal – of nonviolence, love and compassion. Then you are in the future. This present is just to become a past, your real self is in the future, so you go on identifying yourself with ideals. Those ideals are also ways of not accepting the reality. You are violent – that is the case. And the present is the only thing that is existential; the future is not. Your ideals are just dreams. They are tricks to postpone the mind, to focus the mind somewhere else.

    You are violent: this is the case, so accept it. And do not try to be nonviolent. A violent mind CANNOT become nonviolent. How is this possible? Look deep into it. You are violent, so how can you be nonviolent? Whatsoever you do will be done by the violent mind – whatsoever! Even while striving to be nonviolent, the effort will be done by the violent mind. You are violent, so by trying to be nonviolent you will be violent. In the very effort to be nonviolent, you will try every type of violence.

    That is why you go to these strivers for nonviolence. They may not be violent with others, but they are with themselves. They are very violent with themselves – murdering themselves. And the more they get mad against themselves, the more they are celebrated. When they become completely mad, suicidal, then the society says, ”These are the sages.” But they have only transformed the object of violence, nothing else. They were violent with someone else, now they are violent with themselves – but the violence is there. And when you are violent with someone else the law can protect, the court can help, the society will condemn you. But when you are violent against yourself there is no law. No law can protect you against yourself.

    When man is against himself there is no protection, nothing can be done. And no one cares because it is your business. No one else is involved in it: it is your business. So-called monks, so-called saints, they are violent against themselves. No one is interested. They say, ”Okay! Go on doing it. It is your business.”

    If your mind is one of greed, how can you be non-greedy? The greedy mind will remain greedy. Whatsoever is done by it to go beyond greed is not going to help. Of course, we can create new greeds. Ask a greedy mind, ”What are you doing just accumulating wealth? You will die and you cannot take your wealth with you.” This is the logic of the so-called religious preachers – that you cannot take your wealth with you. But if someone could take it, then the whole logic would fail.

    The greedy man feels the logic, of course. He asks, ”How can I take wealth with me?” But he really wants to take it. That is why the priest becomes influential. He shows him that it is nonsense to accumulate things which cannot be taken beyond death. He says, ”I will teach you how to accumulate things which can be taken. Virtue can be taken, PUNYA – good deeds – can be taken, goodness can be taken, but not wealth. So donate the wealth.”

    But this is an appeal to his greed. This is telling him, ”Now we will give you better things which can be carried beyond death.” The appeal obtains results. The greedy man feels, ”You are right. Death is there and nothing can be done about it, so I must do something which can be carried beyond. I must create some kind of bank balance in the other world also. The world, this bank balance, cannot be with me forever.” He goes on talking in these terms.

    Go through the scriptures... they appeal to your greed. They say, ”What are you doing wasting your time in momentary pleasures?” The emphasis is on ‘momentary’. So find some eternal pleasures; then it is okay. They are not against pleasures, they are just against their being momentary. Look at the greed!

    Sometimes it happens that you may find a non-greedy man who is enjoying momentary pleasures, but you cannot find among your saints a man who is not asking, demanding for eternal pleasures. The greed in them is even more. You can find a non-greedy man among ordinary men, but you cannot find a non-greedy man among your so-called saints. They also want pleasures, but they are more greedy than you. You are satisfied with momentary pleasures and they are not. Their greed is bigger. Their greed can only be satisfied with eternal pleasures.

    Infinite greed asks for infinite pleasures – remember this. A finite greed is satisfied with finite pleasure. They will ask you, ”What are you doing loving a woman? She is nothing but bones and blood. Look deep into the woman you love. What is she?” They are not against the woman, they are against the bones, against the blood, against the body. But if a woman is of gold, then it is okay. They are asking for women of gold.

    They are not in this world, so they create another world. They say, ”In heaven there are golden damsels – APSARAS – who are beautiful and who never age.” In the Hindu heaven apsaras, the heavenly girls, remain always at sixteen. They never grow older, they are always sixteen – never less, never more. So what are you doing wasting your time on these ordinary women? Think of heaven. They are not against pleasure. Really, they are against momentary pleasure.

    If, through some whim, God gives this world eternal pleasure, your whole edifice of religion will fall down immediately; the whole appeal will be lost. If somehow bank balances can be carried beyond death, no one will be interested in creating bank balances in the other world. So death is a great help to the priests.

    A greedy man is always attracted by another greed. If you tell him and convince him that his greed is the cause of his misery, and that if he leaves greed he will attain a blissful state, he may try –because now you are not really against his greed. You are giving his greed new pastures. He can move into new dimensions of greed.

    So tantra says that a greedy mind cannot become non-greedy, a violent mind cannot become nonviolent. But this seems very hopeless. If this is the case, then nothing can be done. Then what does tantra stand for? If a greedy mind cannot become non-greedy, and a violent mind can not become nonviolent, and a sex-obsessed mind transformed beyond sex, if nothing can be done then what does tantra stand for? Tantra is not saying that nothing can be done. Something can be done, but the dimension is completely different.

    A greedy mind has to understand that it is greedy and accept it – not try to be non-greedy. The greedy mind has to go deep within itself to realize the depth of its greed. Not moving away from it, but remaining with it; not moving in ideals – in contradictory ideals, in opposite ideals – but remaining in the present, moving into the greed, knowing the greed, understanding the greed, and not trying to escape from it in any way. If you can remain with your greed, many things will happen. If you can remain with your greed, with your sex, with your anger, your ego will dissolve. This will be the first thing – and what a great miracle it is!